


Walk Through The Stars With Me

by Kate_Shepard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-01 23:50:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 30,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6541828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Shepard/pseuds/Kate_Shepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Kal'Reegar rather than Tali joins Shepard on the second Normandy. Romance blossoms. It's told in the first person as a story being written by Shepard after the war.</p><p>This comes from a conglomeration of a few prompts shifted into a separate idea. One was a suggestion about what might happen if Shepard were too late on Omega and the merc gangs got Garrus. (I have a story based on that prompt.) It made me start thinking about other characters, including Tali. In this, Shepard is too late to save Tali but Reegar is still alive and volunteers to come with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> BioWare owns the Mass Effect universe and all characters. I just play with it for my own entertainment.

Haestrom was hot. Insanely, ridiculously, fry your shields and melt your face off hot. Even Garrus and Thane were unhappy about it and Garrus’ homeworld required its inhabitants to evolve a metallic carapace to counter the radiation and Thane was cold-blooded and loved heat. It would be worth it, though, if it meant getting Tali back. I’d missed Tali. The sweet quarian was like the little sister I’d never had. I didn’t blame her at all for staying with the Fleet when I had shown back up. In fact, I was proud of her. Tali had become not just a leader but a dedicated one. Her men on that particular mission...not so much. 

I admittedly hadn’t had an extreme amount of interaction with quarians outside of Tali. I’d felt sorry for Kenn, the one we’d met on Omega, and the female I’d helped on Ilium. Aside from that, though, the ones I’d met had been mistrustful, sneaky, and underhanded. Tali had always spoken highly of her people but did so with the blind loyalty of a child who’d never had to witness the dark underbelly of her own society. It sounded idealistic, sure, but there was no way that Tali’s view of her people hadn’t been a bit biased. Still, I prided myself on viewing people as individuals rather than species. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have had a turian, a quarian, two asari, a drell, two krogan, and an AI on my ship at various times over the past year. _Years._ I was still getting used to the fact that two years had passed by me.

The mission went completely sideways when we found a group of dead quarian soldiers and I took one of their comms. I felt vaguely guilty for removing the guy’s mask to get to it. It felt disrespectful, like I was seeing something I wasn’t meant to, and I knelt beside him and whispered, “Keelah se’lai,” even though I still wasn’t entirely certain what the phrase meant. I’d heard Tali use it often enough to get the gist well enough that I thought it was appropriate. 

I could admit to a momentary distraction at my first sight of a quarian without his mask. He looked surprisingly human in a way that was similar to the asari as well. I couldn’t see much. He had an undersuit that covered his head and left only his face bare. But I could see the outline of his ears through the material and could tell that those were different from humans, though it was similar in that they had them at all. None of the other races did. His skin was a pale green a few shades lighter than Thane’s and he had what I thought were tattoos over his forehead. His eyes were tilted more than a human’s and the glow that I remembered from seeing Tali’s through her mask was gone. His nose, lips, cheeks, facial structure were all very similar to a human, however. I hadn’t realized that we looked so much alike. 

I replaced the mask with a reverence I didn’t usually show and put the comm unit to my ear. A distinctly quarian voice came through and I was glad, not for the first time, that they didn’t breathe like a volus. If I’d realized that it was the first time I was hearing my very soul speak, I’d have paid more attention to the moment. The news he gave me, however, was distinctly unwelcome. Tali had holed up in an observatory across the compound with a squad of marines guarding her. They’d been fighting for days. The marines were dead all but to the last man and he’d held off the geth from Tali’s position for almost thirty-six hours while waiting for backup. He’d been shot over eighteen hours ago and infection had set in. He paused to fire what sounded like a rocket launcher and I was surprised that he was still fighting. He must be dedicated to Tali. Then he gave me news that made me feel like an elcor had kicked me in the chest and drew a pained sound from Garrus. The marine was almost certain that Tali was dead. The geth had finally managed to hack through the door. She’d held them back until the colossus had turned and fired into the room. There had been silence from that area since and the geth had turned their attention back to the marine. He was pinned down and his ship had been disabled. Even if it weren’t, he was unwilling to leave without confirmation that Tali was truly gone. 

I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead in a gesture I’d picked up from Anderson. Tali was probably dead. The geth wouldn’t have left her alone otherwise and she wouldn’t have stopped fighting. My assignment here was over before it truly began but that didn’t mean that the mission itself was. This marine had risked his life above and beyond the call of duty for Tali. The entire rest of his squad had been killed, which meant that he was the only one left of Tali’s. If my friend truly was gone, then I was at least going to do one last thing for her and save the final survivor. “Tell me where you are,” I said. “We’re on our way.”

I found him pinned down behind a wall with a platoon of geth behind him backed up by a colossus. It fired on us and Garrus said, “Just like…damn it.”

“I know,” I said, “but we need to focus.”

We jumped down behind the wall and the marine introduced himself as Kal’Reegar. He showed me where Tali was as I scanned him with my omni-tool. He was running a fever and showing signs of infection throughout his body even with the seals in his suit and antibiotics. He needed a doctor and fast. I didn’t know how he wasn’t delirious already. I said, “You need medical attention now.”

He shook his head and said, “The geth might get me, but I’m not going to die from an infection in the middle of a battle. That’s just insulting.”

I decided then that I liked this Kal’Reegar. “Stay down anyway. We’ll deal with the colossus, recover Tali, and get you back to our ship. It’s already stocked with quarian medications and rations in preparation for her so we can take care of you until we can get you back to the Fleet. You’ve done enough, Reegar. We’ll take it from here.”

“Wasn’t asking your permission, ma’am. My job was to keep Tali safe and I’m not going to stand there while you run into enemy fire. They killed my whole squad!” he shouted.

“And if you want to honor your squad, to honor _Tali_ , watch my back,” I said. “I need you here in case reinforcements arrive. Now, _stand down_.” With that, I drew the Cain from my back and, when Reegar, Garrus, and Thane were down, fired on the colossus. Gods, I loved that gun.

“Holy shit,” Reegar said when the mushroom cloud dissipated. “Tali was right. You don’t mess around.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. 

There were a few stragglers who’d survived the blast and we took them down as we crossed the bridge to the observatory. The door was open and I braced myself before stepping inside. As I’d feared, Tali was on the floor. Her weapon was still in her hand. Blood bloomed like morbid rosettes on her new adult suit. I dropped to my knees as Garrus scanned her body to confirm what we already knew. I pulled Tali’s head into my lap and bent over her like I could somehow still protect her, like I hadn’t already failed her. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I should have come sooner.” 

I had thought that I’d suffered enough loss—my family, my squad on Akuze, Jenkins, Nihlus, Ash, twenty of my crew on the original _Normandy_ —to make myself immune to it but grief washed over me in waves and I felt hot tears stream down my face as Garrus crouched beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. Normally, I can’t stand to cry. I see it as weakness in myself and it’s something that makes me uncomfortable in others because I don’t know how to handle it. Here, though, with this…it felt like it would just be wrong to hold it back, like I’d be denying how much she meant to me. I’d never told her that she was one of the best people I’d ever met in this entire goddamn galaxy and now I’d never get to. I’m not good with emotions and I’m shit at telling people what they mean to me. 

“Damn it,” I said. “God damn it. Why Tali? Why now?” My timing had always been impeccable. I’d arrived to recruit Archangel just in time to save Garrus from the mercenary groups. I’d arrived just in time to keep Jedore from draining Grunt’s tank. I’d arrived just in time to keep Nassana’s guards from killing Thane and Samara from killing Detective Anaya and the vorcha from killing everyone in the district on Omega and Niket from handing Oriana over to her father. Why did that perfect timing I’d taken for granted have to end now? I’d have traded almost everyone on my crew just to have Tali back. 

“Damn it,” Kal’Reegar said as he limped into the observatory. He, too, dropped to his knees beside us and hung his head. “This is my fault,” he said baldly. 

“No,” I said. “You did your best. That’s all anyone could ask for and all she would have expected. She wouldn’t have asked you to throw your life away for her. Come on. We need to get back to the _Normandy_ before more geth arrive.”

“Wait,” Reegar said. “There’s something…you should close her eyes.”

“Me?” I asked. That seemed like something that should be done by one of her people; not by the former commander who hadn’t shown up in time to save her. 

“Yeah,” he said. “You were her captain. More than that. She said once that she’d be willing to link suit environments with you. I don’t know if you know what that means but it’s the greatest sign of trust we have in our culture. It means she viewed you as family.”

My hands shook as I unsealed the mask. Thane turned away and Garrus started to as well but I said, “No. You were her family, too.” The three of us had made up my ground squad in the hunt for Saren from the very beginning. We’d been more than a team. We’d been a unit. I adored Liara, Wrex, and Kaidan…well, before Horizon…but Garrus and Tali were something more. My breath caught as I carefully lifted the mask. “I knew she’d be beautiful,” I said. I hadn’t needed to see her to know. Her personality, her kindness, her spirit, all spoke to a beautiful person. It only fit that she’d be breathtaking physically. I’m not into women but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be awed by one. 

Garrus said, “I always imagined there was the face of a—what do humans call it—an angel under that mask. I was right.”

The glow had already begun to fade and a tear slipped down my cheek to fall onto Tali’s. “Rest well, Tali’Zorah vas Neema nar Rayya. My sister,” I said as I gently closed her lids and replaced the mask.

“Keelah se’lai,” Reegar said.

Garrus gingerly picked up Tali’s body and cradled her to his chest like a child as I slung an arm around Kal’Reegar to help him walk. He leaned more heavily on me than I thought he intended but moved under his own volition. Thane covered us with his pistol as we made our way back to the shuttle. The ride to the ship was silent. When we reached the cargo bay, Thane dragged out one of the stasis pods. I stopped Garrus before he laid her in it. “Get that logo off of there first,” I insisted. “I’m not putting her in a Cerberus coffin.” It was a little thing but it seemed important and Reegar’s nod of approval confirmed it. 

Thane pulled out a blade from one of his many hidden compartments and peeled the logo off of the lid. Only then did I allow Garrus to lay Tali down. I sealed the pod and turned to Reegar. “Come on. Let’s get you to the med bay. Dr. Chakwas has treated Tali on more than one occasion. She’ll know what to do.”

I settled Reegar in with the doctor and then Garrus and I went to the lounge. Wordlessly, we each poured a glass of whiskey and clinked the rims together. A few minutes later, Joker limped into the room and poured his own. Dr. Chakwas joined us shortly after and assured me that Reegar would recover before pouring one for herself. We drank in silence, the last of the original _Normandy_ crew who’d known her, as we each fell into our own memories of her. For once, Joker didn’t have a snarky comment and Garrus didn’t have a joke to lighten the mood. It was Karin who lifted her glass and said solemnly, “To Tali. She was one hell of a woman.”


	2. Chapter 2

When Kal’Reegar had sufficiently recovered, I gave the order to set a course for the Migrant Fleet. The doc hadn’t wanted to move him before he was well and I suspected that he hadn’t been ready to face his people yet. I knew just how hard it was to go back and explain how you’d managed to lose an entire squad, so I didn’t rush him. We detoured to the coordinates for Jacob’s father and dealt with that issue and then went to Tuchanka to help Grunt and Mordin. Joker had just set the course for the Fleet when the Illusive Man alerted me to the ‘disabled’ Collector ship and ordered us to check it out. Reegar asked to join the ground team. 

I wasn’t certain about bringing an untried member on something like this but I supposed that anyone who’d managed to hold off a platoon of geth and a colossus for almost two days by himself had already proven himself and I could understand the need to get back out in the field after a disaster. I’d stocked up on supplies for Tali, including new seals and patches, so he was able to fix his exo-suit and he was familiar enough with our weaponry to use the ones in the armory rather than his own which were more geared toward fighting geth than Collectors. I briefed him thoroughly on both the enemy we were likely to face and my fighting style. He said, “Don’t worry, ma’am. Quarians don’t do close quarters combat if we can help it but I’ve fought with a vanguard before. Just give me a heads up before you charge and I’ll keep the enemies off your ass when you come out of it.”

I chose Thane for the third member of my ground squad as he was the most well-rounded member of my team. He could snipe from a distance or fight up close with equal skill. His warp was useful for Habinger’s barriers and armor, and he could throw husks out of the way if I was unable to scatter them with a shockwave. If worse came to worst, then Thane and I could handle just about anything that got thrown our way. Reegar shook his head and I could almost imagine him smiling as I loaded up the Cain. “I’d kill for one of those things,” he said.

“I can get you one,” I offered, “but as long as you’re on my team, I carry the nuke launcher.”

“That’s just because you like causing explosions,” Garrus said. He was leaning up against the side of the armor locker with his arms crossed over his chest. He’d been in a better mood since I’d agreed to help him find Fade and Sidonis but the knowledge that Tali remained down in the cargo bay was a hard one to bear for all of us. “You sure you don’t need me for this one?” he asked.

“We’ll be all right,” I said as I clipped my weapons to the back of my armor. “Besides, I’m sure you have some calibrating to do.”

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “I am still trying to get that new cannon calibrated. My calculations are right; I know it. She just isn’t giving me that last little bit of oomph I know she’s got in her. I had an idea that I’d wanted to run by Tali, but…well, you know.”

“I might be able to help,” Reegar offered. “I’m not the prodigy that Tali’Zorah was but I’m pretty good with weapons and engineering all the same. Wouldn’t be a very good quarian if I wasn’t.”

Garrus nodded. “Yeah, thanks. I try to run it by Shepard but she has more of an affinity toward firing giant guns than setting them up.”

I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a point-and-shoot kind of girl.”

“That’s my type of woman,” Reegar said appreciatively and I’m not ashamed to admit that my stomach fluttered just a little bit. Something about that no-nonsense, plain-talking, baritone just did it for me from the very beginning. 

Garrus returned to the battery and Reegar, Thane, and I boarded the shuttle. I drew my shotgun when we docked with the ship but it was eerily quiet. “Looks like a bug’s nest,” Reegar said as we moved through the silent ship. “And these are the things that have been taking your people?”

“Yeah,” I said. 

“Up ahead,” Thane said. “Bodies.”

I shuddered and could almost see Reegar scowling through the mask. “This is nasty business,” he said. “No one should be treated this way.”

He proved himself to be one hell of a soldier when the trap was sprung and we had to fight our way out. Thane covered us from long range while I got up close and personal and Reegar fit seamlessly into the middle. It didn’t take him long to find our rhythm and settle in to it. He might have been accustomed to fighting geth rather than Collectors, but he was a soldier and the target didn’t matter as long as he knew how to kill it. In a way, it was so much like fighting with Garrus and Tali again that I had to combat nostalgia along with the enemy. It didn’t matter what the ship threw at us: husks, Collectors, Harbinger, the damn praetorian. He didn’t flinch. 

Later, after I’d run through the debrief with the team and the Illusive Man, showered, changed, talked to my crew, cleaned my weapons, and written my report, I was startled by a knock on my cabin door. My crew generally didn’t come up here unless I invited them as they knew it was the only place I could go where no one needed something from me. I wasn’t entirely surprised, however, to find Reegar standing outside. Tali had told me about quarian ships and how personal space tended to be limited to inside of their suits given how tightly packed most ships were. Tali had had a habit of coming to my cabin when she needed something, too. I didn’t mind as long as there wasn’t a constant flow of traffic. After all, I showed up in their quarters on a regular basis.

I invited him in and took a seat on the couch as he clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace. I thought he was working up to something so I waited for him to speak. Eventually, he paused and said, “Sorry to bother you, ma’am. I’ve been thinking about that Collector ship and Garrus wanting Tali’Zorah’s help with the guns and you coming to recruit her. It appears there’s a vacancy in your crew and I’d like to fill in for Tali’Zorah if you’d let me. I know I can’t take her place but your mission is important. She told us about the Reapers and if the Collectors are working with them, then they need to be stopped. Even if they weren’t, you helped my people when you took down Saren and the geth and I’d like to return the favor.”

“You want to join us?” I asked, surprised. 

He said, “I’ll admit that I’m one of the last people who would volunteer to work for Cerberus but…well, I wouldn’t be working for them. I’d be working for you. It seems like I wouldn’t be the only one on the crew who was making that distinction.”

“You’re sure about this?” I asked. “The Migrant Fleet wouldn’t mind?”

“At the moment, ma’am, I don’t really care if they do. I just lost my entire squad under my watch over research I don’t even understand,” he said. “I’m willing to sacrifice my team and myself if necessary for something that means something. A single star dying out faster than it’s supposed to…I just don’t see how that was worth it. This mission means something.”

“You know it’s called a suicide mission for a reason, right?” I asked. “I don’t know if we’re ever coming back from this.”

“Like I said,” he said with a shrug of his broad shoulders, “I’m willing to die for a cause I can believe in. Fighting the Reapers is a cause I can believe in.”

I stood and extended my hand. He shook it firmly and I felt the heat of it down to my toes even through his gloves. I gave myself a mental shake as I wondered what the hell had gotten into me and said, “Welcome aboard, Kal’Reegar.”


	3. Chapter 3

I stood in the cockpit with Reegar and Joker as we flew up to the _Rayya_. It was my first time seeing the Flotilla I’d heard so much about. Tali had told me about their numbers but I hadn’t imagined the sheer size of it. The entire human race could have fit on the ships there which, I supposed, made sense considering that it housed the entire quarian race. Modern day gypsies, indeed. I’d lived my life aboard starships so the idea of being born, living, and dying in space wasn’t at all foreign to me. I didn’t really feel much more attachment to Earth or any of our other colonies than I did to any other planet. Tali’s idealization of a homeworld had never made sense to me but, perhaps, I just took for granted that there was a planet I could go to where my people lived and simply didn’t appreciate what I had.

Kal crossed his arms and paced like I’d noticed that he had a tendency to do. He wasn’t a very static person. I’d have called it nervous energy if he wasn’t so damn confident. No, it was more that he was just so dynamic and full of life and passion and energy that it had to go somewhere. He wasn’t the type to just sit still and do nothing. Since he’d been on the ship, Daniels and Donnelly had told me the drive core’s efficiency had almost doubled and he’d helped Garrus figure out the problem with the Thanix cannon, though he claimed that had been more a matter of giving him a sounding board than actually coming up with new ideas. He’d overclocked the processor in Mordin’s omni-tool and had installed a tactical cloak and omni-blade on mine, though I didn’t care much about the first as subtlety wasn’t really my style. The second was great, though. I was really looking forward to trying it out in combat. The targets in the cargo bay weren’t all that realistic. Charge and stab, cloak and stab; Kasumi and I could have a field day together. 

The Migrant Fleet hailed us and Kal took over the comm. “This is Kal’Reegar vas Tonbay nar Idenna requesting permission to dock with the _Rayya_.”

“Our system has your ship flagged as Cerberus. Verify,” the voice over the comm said.

“After time adrift among open stars, along tides of light and through shoals of dust, I will return to where I began,” he said. It was pretty, poetic, and I could almost imagine him as a romantic. He’d told me that the Fleet gave a set of codes to every quarian when they left on Pilgrimage since so many returned with strange ships. One code gave the all clear. The other told the Fleet that they were under duress and to shoot down the ship. They’d do it and any quarian who cared about their people wouldn’t hesitate to give the second code if necessary to protect the Fleet. 

“Permission granted. Welcome home, Kal’Reegar,” the voice on the comm said.

“We’d like a security and quarantine team to meet us. The ship isn’t clean,” he told them. “We also need to be met by Admiral Rael’Zorah vas Rayya and Admiral Shala’Raan vas Tonbay. We’re bringing home Tali’Zorah vas Neema.”

“Understood,” the voice said. 

Kal turned to me and explained, “Shala’Raan is Tali’Zorah’s mother’s best friend. They linked suits when Tali was born. Since Tali’s mother is dead, that makes Admiral Raan as close to an aunt as most of us have.”

“One child per family,” I remembered Tali saying. “No aunts and uncles in your society. How is Rael’Zorah going to handle this? I’m not really familiar with your traditions here.”

Reegar shook his head and said, “I don’t know. From what I understand, Tali’Zorah and her father weren’t all that close. We’re an emotional people, though, Shepard. Be prepared for grief, anger, anything. I don’t know what your welcome will be like. Cerberus isn’t well-liked here but you were Tali’s friend and her captain. That should get you some respect.”

“What will they do with her?” she asked.

He looked away and said, “We don’t have room on the Flotilla to keep things that don’t have use. That…includes people.” He sighed heavily. “She’ll be given a memorial and committed to the stars.”

“You mean they’re going to space her,” I said and my chest grew tight.

“Don’t humans have a tradition of burial at sea for some people?” he asked. “It isn’t that different. What do you do with humans who die on your ships?”

He didn’t seem offended, fortunately. Quarians were used to cultural differences and not much rattled Reegar. I said, “I guess traditional burial doesn’t work when you don’t have a planet. We either take the body back to their home planet for burial or cremate them and space the ashes.”

He gestured with a hand and said, “See, to me, that sounds pretty barbaric. In space, you’re preserved. Burial means eventual decomposition and to burn the body is just…disrespectful. No offense.”

“None taken,” I assured him. “I can see your point. I just…spacing is a touchy subject for me. It’s like sending her out into my worst nightmare.”

“What would you do with her?” he asked, sounding curious.

“Use _Normandy_ ’s stealth drive to get us to Rannoch and find an area free of geth,” I said. “Lay her to rest on your homeworld.”

“You would do that?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“She should get to see it,” I said. “At least once.”

“Did she ever tell you what ‘keelah se’lai’ means?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“There’s no literal translation into your language,” he said, “but the closest is something along the lines of, ‘By the homeworld I hope to see again someday.’”

I stepped forward and placed a hand on his forearm and looked as closely into his glowing eyes as our masks would allow. “Kal, get them to let me take her home.”

“All right,” he said. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try.”

“You’re serious about this?” Joker asked and I realized I still had my hand on Reegar’s arm. I jerked away like it had burned me. “I mean, I loved Tali and all but you want to take us into geth space just to bury her?”

“If you died, would you want to be buried on Tiptree?” I asked him.

“I’d be dead, Commander,” he said. “I wouldn’t care. But…I guess if I’d never gotten to see it and I’d grown up hearing about it…maybe.” He sighed. “All right. You figure out a way to get us in and out and I’ll get us there.”

“If we can’t get to Rannoch, the Omega 4 relay is going to be impossible,” I told him.


	4. Chapter 4

Once the docking and decon protocols were complete, we were allowed onto the _Rayya_. A quarian greeted us and introduced himself as Captain Kar’Danna vas Rayya. He told us that Tali’s father and Admiral Raan were waiting for us down the passageway and then pulled Kal aside. While they were talking, I joined Garrus in the shuttle bay to retrieve Tali. Even if they let me take her home, they’d still want to have her here for the memorial and Reegar thought that Rael’Zorah would want to see his daughter a final time. We shouldered the coffin and Kal and Kar’Danna joined us to carry it out and into the public area. We settled her in the center of a small area that was almost like an amphitheater with a raised dais in the front that reminded me of the one the Council used.

I’d prepared for grief or anger or denial or a thousand other emotions when Tali’s father saw her. I hadn’t planned for an absolute lack of emotion. Admiral Raan cried. Admirals Zal’Koris and Han’Gerrel were visibly upset. Admiral Xen stood off to the side with Rael’Zorah. It sounded like they were talking about the geth and by that, I mean the geth in general, not the geth that had killed his daughter. Curiosity got the better of me and I moved closer until I could overhear them. They were discussing a war to retake Rannoch. I motioned Kal over and he listened with me and said in a low voice, “That’s an idiotic idea. If the admirals throw the Fleet at the geth, all they’ll get back is scrap metal. I think you’ve seen enough to know that I won’t shy away from a fight, but we need to find another way. Of course, a soldier can’t say that unless his superiors ask. Wonder what they’ve done that makes them think we have a chance. Maybe it has something to do with the _Alerei_.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He looked up at the admirals and then gestured with his head for me to follow him. He led us off to the side and said, “Kar’Danna just pulled me aside and told me that they lost an entire team on the _Alarei_. Geth have somehow gotten loose. Rael’Zorah was working on the ship and barely made it out alive. He can’t tell us how they became active. Claims they were working on disabled parts he’d gotten Tali to send him to try to come up with a new weapon for them.” He hesitated. “Shepard, he’s saying that Tali accidentally sent active geth to him.”

“She would never do that,” I said firmly. “There is nothing in this galaxy that Tali loved more than the Migrant Fleet. She would never endanger your people and she was too damn smart and knew too much about the geth to make that kind of mistake. He’s lying.”

Kal nodded. “I know. I don’t like the sound of this or what it implies. I knew they weren’t close but to think he’d actually throw his own daughter over like that…he has to be protecting himself.”

“What does this mean for Tali?” I asked. 

His voice lowered even more and he said, “If convicted, she’d be posthumously exiled. Her name would be wiped from all records. Worse, she’d become a cautionary tale we tell our kids. Kar’Danna wants me to lead a team on the _Alarei_ and go find evidence to clear her name.”

“I’m coming with you,” I said immediately. “So is Garrus. We won’t let this happen.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said. “Hell, you’ve got more experience fighting geth than I do. You want to lead it, say the word.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go. There’s no point in wasting time.”

“I can help,” a heavily accented female voice said from behind me. I turned to see Admiral Raan. “I can give you schematics for the _Alarei_ and I can review any evidence you find. If Rael or Xen get their hands on it first, they can twist it to their purposes. I have also arranged for Tali’Zorah to be placed under your command. She is now Tali’Zorah vas Normandy.”

“You took her ship name?” Reegar demanded. “Why?”

“I take it that’s a bad thing?” I asked him.

“It’s like they’ve exiled her already,” Kal said. “Furthermore, if there’s a trial, you’re her captain. You have to represent her.”

Raan held up her hands and said, “Listen. It’s not what you think. Kar’Danna is a wonderful captain and he cares about his people but he’s not a speaker and he doesn’t know Tali like Shepard did. We have all seen the footage of Commander Shepard’s speech above the _Normandy_ before the Battle of the Citadel. She is Tali’s best hope of defense against the admiralty board. Rael’Zorah must recuse himself as must I. It will be Xen, Gerrel, and Koris you must convince and there are things happening to which you have not been privy. This has nothing to do with Tali or the _Alarei_ and everything to do with convincing our people to go to war with the geth. Xen and Gerrel want that. The admirals will not be on Tali’s side. She is as good as exiled already without Shepard.”

“Can you do this, ma’am?” Reegar asked me. “Will you do this?”

I looked between them and said, “I’ll gladly speak for Tali but I’m no lawyer and I don’t know your laws.”

“Our legal rules are simple,” Raan said. “There are no loopholes to wade through. You present her case as best you can and they cast their judgment.”

“We have another problem,” I said. “Tali may have had her differences with her father, but she wouldn’t want him exiled, either. I don’t see how to do this without betraying what she would want.”

“We can figure that out later, ma’am,” Kal said. “For now, we need to see if there’s anything to find in the first place.”

“You’re right,” I said. “You can get us onto the ship, Admiral?”

“I have a shuttle waiting to take you over,” she said.

I called Garrus over and explained the situation as Kal led us through to the shuttle bay. I was glad we’d come armed and armored. I didn’t want to have to waste time on additional decon cycles. The shuttle was waiting and it carried us over to the ship where Tali’s father was working. As Raan had warned us, it was crawling with geth. We found the team of marines scattered through the ship and Kal tensed with each body we discovered. He’d known these guys, I realized. He’d probably served with them. This was a huge blow after losing his team on Haestrom. He was just getting hit over and over. It just seemed to make him more determined, though. I wanted to make a comment to Garrus about old times but it felt wrong without Tali. 

We found the evidence in the form of audio and video logs that very clearly implicated Rael’Zorah. He claimed that he wanted to reclaim their homeworld because of a promise to his daughter but the fact that he was throwing her under the bus to save his own skin belied that claim. The man was a damn coward. He’d escaped the ship by leaving the rest of his men to die. And he was an admiral of the Fleet. “That man is never stepping foot on my ship,” I said in a low, angry voice. It was the worst form of insult to a quarian and I meant every word.

Kal nodded and said, “I support that sentiment, ma’am. So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. I could almost hear Tali begging me not to turn her father in. The problem was that if he got away with this now, he could always do it again. He was a damn admiral. He was held to a higher standard for his people.

I said all of this to Reegar and he said, “Tali’Zorah loved her father, sure, but our loyalty is supposed to be to the Fleet as a whole. He betrayed the Fleet. If he’d died here, that might be one thing but he didn’t. He’s alive and that means leaving a traitor in our midst. That doesn’t sit right with me, ma’am.”

“They’re your people, Reegar,” I finally said. “At the end of the day, Tali is dead and the rest of you are the ones who have to live with the consequences of our decision. This isn’t my place to decide. You know your people. What would they want? I can only guess as to what Tali would want for her father. I know that she wanted what was best for the Fleet.”

“I think we should give this to Admiral Raan and let her show it to Admiral Koris,” he said. “He’s been pretty outspoken against Tali’Zorah but he’ll change that if he sees that she’s innocent. He doesn’t believe in going to war any more than I do.”

“All right,” I said. 

The ride back was tense with both of us wondering if we were doing right by our friend. What it came down to in the end was what was right for the majority. That’s how I made all of my decisions even when the choices seemed impossible. The greater good trumped individual needs every time. Garrus said I was very turian in that way. Tali called it quarian. They all agreed that I was strange for a human. I disagreed on that. We’re an individualistic species, sure, but when the shit really hits the fan, we come together. I just thought it was one of the ways that we were all more alike than we sometimes realized.

Raan and Koris took the data and Koris presented it to Gerrel and Xen in front of the population of the _Rayya_. There would be no deniability. Word spread fast on ships. I said a silent apology to Tali as her father was exiled from the Fleet. There was enough evidence against Xen to warrant disciplinary action but not enough to strip her of her rank or ship name. I gave in to temptation and shouted down the admiralty board for even having the quad to try to pin this shit on Tali when she couldn’t even defend herself. Some damn family. It felt good, especially when Raan thanked me for standing up for one of their people and I was able to inform them all in no uncertain terms that she was one of mine. At this point, I didn’t care what they wanted. I was taking Tali home. Kal’Reegar walked out with us with his head held high. I hoped I hadn’t just screwed up his position with his people.


	5. Chapter 5

We set course for Rannoch. Miranda bitched about it but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I’d been running from one place to another across the galaxy for Cerberus since I’d been resurrected. Everyone kept telling me that we needed the entire crew focused and all unfinished business taken care of, all loose ends tied up. I’d taken the time to deal with Miranda’s sister, Jacob’s father, Grunt’s rite of passage, Mordin’s assistant, Jack’s old prison, Samara’s daughter, Kasumi’s boyfriend’s murderer, Zaeed’s old partner, and would be going after Thane’s son and Garrus’ old teammate once this was done. I was damn well going to take the time to take care of my little sister. They weren’t the only ones with loose ends to tie. Besides, all of this affected Reegar as well.

I talked to him after we left the Fleet and was very surprised when he said, “I’m impressed with your understanding of my people, Shepard. You don’t just care about Tali. You care about us as a whole. That means a lot to me. Thank you for what you did back there.”

I didn’t know quite what to say then and I didn’t know quite what to say when we approached Rannoch. I called him up to the cockpit as we weaved our way through the ships stationed around the planet. Joker said something about windows and I pointed out that, fortunately, none of them appeared to have them. I doubted that synthetics spent a whole lot of time looking out at the stars. When I said so, EDI said, “It is true that we do not have the same aesthetic appreciation as organics do but that does not mean that introspection is a solely organic trait.”

Kal cursed and said, “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to having an AI on this ship, Shepard.”

“If I intended to harm you, Kal’Reegar vas Tonbay, I would have done so by now. I prefer to direct my attention to Mr. Moreau,” EDI said. “His responses are much more interesting.”

“I bet that’s what the geth said, too,” Reegar muttered. “How do we know it isn’t transmitting our location to the geth now or interfering with our stealth system? Why would an AI help organics over synthetics?”

I said, “EDI’s helped us out of a lot of situations, Reegar. I trust her. She wouldn’t betray us now.”

“It,” he said. 

“EDI sounds like a female and has a female name. I use the feminine pronoun. Calling her ‘it’ sounds wrong,” I said. 

“Kal’Reegar,” EDI cut in, “we are beginning our final approach to Rannoch. I believe you would appreciate the view.”

“Keelah,” he gasped and stepped forward. For once, he held himself perfectly still. 

“I wish I could see your face right now,” I said with a smile. I believed that expression would be one I’d carry with me for the rest of my life.

He absently reached up and pressed a button on the side of his mask and the opacity changed. I forgot all about the planet looming in the windows. He was, simply, stunning. I’d already known that he was entirely masculine. Even in the enviro-suit, his muscular build was plain to see. His voice was deep, his hands sure and steady. His face, though, was absolutely gorgeous. I’d thought Thane was handsome. Kal made him look plain. I couldn’t tell what color his skin was through the mask and could only see him in profile, but I could see the sharp blade of his nose, the hard plane of his cheeks, the strong line of his jaw. The tattoos or ridges or whatever those lines were on their faces reminded me a bit of Garrus’ colony markings even though they looked nothing like them. The pattern was similar in that it was more geometric than sweeping and delicate like Tali’s. It accentuated the strength of his features without making him look feminine. His eyes were even brighter without the mask dimming them and I could see now that the white glow covered the entire orbit. Tali’s when revealed had been a flat white that was a bit unnerving, like a human’s when they rolled their eyes back far enough that only the whites showed. His, though, were full of life. The expression on his face was one of sheer wonder. I’d been right. It was an image I’d take with me forever. I just wished I’d gotten to see it on Tali’s. He pressed the button again and the mask darkened.

We landed in an area that EDI assured us was both devoid of geth and aesthetically pleasing. The others stayed behind and I let Kal go out of the airlock ahead of me. I wanted him to get to see the whole picture without anything else in view so I hung back and looked out over it myself. It was beautiful in a lonely kind of way. It looked like desert and reminded me of the Midwestern part of the North American continent back on Earth. The rock formations were lovely and there was a stream that cut through and poured over the ledge in front of us. Grasses grew along its banks, startlingly green against the red dirt around it. The sky was almost painfully blue above and its color, too, contrasted beautifully with the earth. I was certain Tali would have approved. 

Kal’s voice was almost breathless as he said, “Shepard, do you need me for the next few missions?”

“No,” I said. “Go ahead.”

He reached up and popped the seals on his mask. I looked away. This wasn’t for me. Then he held out his hand and took mine when I stepped forward. His eyes were closed and his face was tilted up to the sun. He smiled and I caught the gleam of sharp canines that made him look almost predatory. He breathed deeply and said, “Do you smell that? What is that?”

“Flowers,” I told him. “There, the yellow plants on the bank. Have you never smelled flowers before?”

“No,” he answered. “Our filters take out scent. I’ve never removed my mask outside of a clean room before.”

“You’ve never felt the sun on your face? Never felt the wind brush over your skin? Never smelled the rain?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know rain had a smell.”

“Keep your eyes closed,” I said and called up my biotics. I removed my gauntlet and let dark energy ripple across the skin of my hand. I brought it up to his face, taking care not to touch him. “Smell that,” I said. “It’s not exactly the same, but it’s close.” The combination of eezo and dark energy smelled like ozone and petrichor. I’d been told more than once that I smelled like a thunderstorm.

“That’s…amazing,” he said and I felt his breath on my skin. He opened his eyes and gazed into mine. God, he was beautiful. 

Without warning, he reached out and pulled me toward him. His head came down and then his lips were brushing against mine. I gasped in surprise and he used the parting of my lips to slide his tongue into my mouth. His hand buried itself in my hair while the other ran over the flexible plates of the armor on my lower back. Mine gripped his shoulders tightly for balance. No one had ever kissed me the way he did. He kissed like he was drinking me in, like he couldn’t get enough, like he was memorizing every bit of it. It was heady, intoxicating, and my head spun. He said my name and then grazed his teeth over my lower lip. The canines were the only ones that looked particularly sharp but, while the remainder were flat, they had an edge to them, and I dimly recalled that they hadn’t always been primarily vegan. That was something that had come with the Flotilla and having to grow their own food on liveships. He was careful about it, letting me feel the scrape without actually breaking skin, and I moaned as his lips began to trail across my cheeks and jaw and down over my throat. He licked the shell of my ear and nipped lightly at the side of my neck and I gasped his name as I tried to remember how to breathe. 

He pulled away and said, “Shit, Shepard. I’m sorry, ma’am. I shouldn’t have—”

I held up a hand and stopped him. “That was…fantastic,” I said. “Don’t apologize.”

He grinned and his teeth flashed in the sunlight. “I might have been thinking about doing that since I saw you fire that Cain on Haestrom. Figured since I already had the mask off, I might as well.”

“You can do that any time you want,” I told him as I forced my hands to release his shoulders. 

He looked down at me and said, “I don’t think you realize what you’re saying, Shepard. Physical intimacy among my species is a lot more complicated than with yours and it isn’t something we do casually. I’m not saying I’m not open to it. I’m just saying a one-night stand isn’t something a quarian does if that’s all you want.”

“I like you, Reegar,” I told him. “You’re a good man, a hell of a soldier, smart, tough, brave, loyal. Those are all appealing qualities.”

“You know quarians can’t blush, right?” he teased. “You might as well give it up if that’s what you’re trying to do.”

“I’m serious,” I told him. “That you’re ridiculously handsome and kiss like the devil is just a bonus.”

He gave me a genuine smile then and it transformed the hard lines of his face and made him look younger than he was. Speaking of which, I realized I didn’t actually know how old he was. I asked and he told me he was thirty-four. Given that quarian lifespans were analogous to humans, it was a good age. He said, “All right, then. If you’re okay with taking this slow and seeing where things go, I’m up for it. Never really thought about being with a human but you aren’t just any human.”

“I’ve never really thought of being with a quarian,” I admitted. 

“Kind of hard to when you don’t know what’s under the suit,” he said.

“It’s more that the only ones you generally meet outside of the Fleet are basically kids,” I said. “Like I said, appearance is an added benefit and I think there’s something beautiful that can be found in almost any species.” When he raised an eyebrow, I said, “Maybe not vorcha or batarians…. Wait. You have eyebrows.” 

“Yeah,” he said slowly.

“Eyebrows made of hair,” I specified. “Not tattoed ones like asari or ridges like drell.” His were dark against his lavender skin.

“We have hair,” he said. “Humans aren’t the only ones, though ours isn’t all over our bodies like yours. Maybe I’ll show you mine one day.”

I lifted my hand and then hesitated. “May I?”

“Might as well,” he said with a grin. 

I stripped off my other gauntlet and raised my hands to his face. His skin was soft but textured differently from a human’s. It reminded me a little bit of the soft leather of Thane’s jacket if that jacket was alive. I traced his features with my fingertips, noting the differences and similarities with human men. His nose was more narrow than most human’s, giving him an almost feline appearance when combined with the glowing eyes. His cheekbones were a little higher and more sharply angled. Unlike a human’s, there was no difference in the tone of the skin on his face and that on his lips. It made them look slightly less full than they actually were. When my thumbs grazed over them, he closed his eyes and his hands tightened on my hips. He parted them obediently when I tugged lightly on the lower one and cracked his eyes open to look down at me as I cocked my head. “You have vampire teeth,” I said with a soft laugh. 

“Meat is in short supply on the Flotilla,” he said, “but we used to be more carnivorous. Before the suits and the Migrant Fleet, all of our teeth were shaped like our canines. They’ve adapted over the centuries to make it easier to chew vegetables but haven’t dulled out yet.”

“I like your teeth,” I told him as I ran my fingers up to his forehead. “What are these? I’ve been wondering. They look like tattoos but they’re raised.”

“Cybernetics,” he said. “Different from the ones you have but the same principle. They help boost our immune systems. They became aesthetic over time. Some of us do have tattoos as well, but they’re more for us than for other people unlike some of the other races.”

“All of this fascinating information about your culture and Tali preferred to talk about her immune system,” I said with a chuckle. “I know there was at least one conversation about hair on the first _Normandy_. Garrus almost shot Ash once when I let her cut my hair down in the cargo bay. Tali never bothered to mention that we weren’t the only race who had it. She just laughed her ass off.”

“Why did he almost shoot her?” Kal asked.

“Apparently, cutting the fringe is a form of torture for turians,” I told him. “He didn’t realize that it doesn’t hurt with hair.”

“Ah,” he said. “We don’t cut ours all that often. I don’t know if that matters to you. It’s just too much of a damn hassle to have to go into a clean room just for that. We keep it short enough to stay out of our seals. Mine’s longer than yours, though.”

“That makes sense,” I told him. “I’m going to think you’re gorgeous no matter what your hair looks like.”

He cupped my face and said, “For the record, I think you’re beautiful. And smart and strong and brave and tough and loyal and a hell of a soldier and a damn good woman.”

I smiled and stepped back reluctantly. “I could do this all day,” I said, “but we’ll have other opportunities for that. This may be your only chance to see your homeworld. You should be looking at it, not me.”

His knuckles grazed my cheek and then he turned. “It’s…unbelievable. Thank you. For bringing me here.” He bent down and trailed his fingers through the dirt. “I’m the first quarian to step foot on Rannoch in three hundred years. You have no idea what that means to me. Hell, to all of my people.” He straightened and said, “Let’s bring Tali home.”

Garrus, Kal, and I went into the cargo bay and lifted the casket containing our friend. We placed it by the stream and I turned to Kal. “What should we do?” I asked. “If we leave her in there, she’ll be in stasis. If we bury her, she’ll return to the earth.”

He thought for a moment and said, “It’s one thing to be buried on a foreign planet. I don’t think any of my people would want that. Here, though, returning to the earth sounds right.”

“Okay,” I said. Garrus found shovels and we began the task of digging a grave near one of the rock formations I thought she’d like. I’d never wanted to do this but the pain was mitigated by the knowledge that we were at least going to be leaving her to rest under the skies of her homeworld. Garrus and I laid her out but I couldn’t bring myself to cover her up so he and Kal filled it in. When they were finished, I said, “Keelah se’lai, Tali vas Rannoch.”

When we were finished, Kal sat down on the bank of the stream with his arms over his knees and his face tilted up to the sun once more. I let the rest of the crew come out and saw Thane grin. He’d mentioned once that he wanted to see a desert. He asked me if this qualified and I told him it did. He slipped a short distance away and I saw him lie on his back with his eyes closed. Mordin went around scanning everything he could find and a few of the human crew waded in the stream. I pulled up my omni-tool and recorded it all. There was a lightness here we hadn’t experienced before that came with being somewhere completely new with no enemies to fight. EDI was scanning to make sure that no geth found us and we could just relax. Mostly, though, I recorded Kal’Reegar’s smile. I took pictures and vids of the empty landscape as well. I thought that he and his people might want to see them. 

I sat down beside him as the sun started to sink toward the horizon. His hand found mine and, though it was a bit strange given our differing number of fingers, they fit together. I leaned my head against his shoulder as we watched the sun set in a watercolor painted sky. It was beautiful and would have been absolutely perfect if Tali had been with us. As it was, it was still better than I ever could have hoped for and more right than anything I’d experienced since waking up to my new life. Before we departed, I took a few keepsakes to give to Kal later.


	6. Chapter 6

He was in the med bay for almost two weeks. Going to visit him meant wearing full armor and helmet and going through multiple decon cycles but I wasn’t about to leave him with no one but the doctors to break up the monotony. To his credit, he made it four days before he started complaining about Mordin’s constant singing and muttering. I probably would have shot the salarian in three. I absolutely adored Mordin but damn, he made a lot of noise when he was working. Kal seemed to appreciate the company once the swelling in his throat went down enough for him to talk. It was strange sitting by someone in a mask. I wanted to, I don’t know, wipe down his forehead with a cloth or whatever you do when your new sort-of boyfriend is sick. I wasn’t really a caretaker but if I was going to be with a quarian, I supposed I needed to learn. He laughed at me when I told him that and said he didn’t know how to be coddled any more than I knew how to coddle. I had to admit it _was_ kind of funny. Neither of us really knew how to do this whole girlfriend/boyfriend thing. Eventually, he took pity on me and told me to just hold his hand. That was nice.

It was hard seeing him sick, especially knowing that I’d contributed to it, and it led me to Mordin with questions. When the scientist told me that being with Kal could kill him, I admit I freaked out a little. It was one thing to accept being attracted to and even dating someone of a different species. I had to agree with Chambers that it was character rather than race or species to which I was drawn. However, the possibility of actually killing your lover just by being with him was daunting. I went to him with the intention of calling it off. He laughed at me again and said that if I didn’t want to be with him, he’d accept that but that if my only reason was worry over his health, I was being stupid. He pointed out that there were plenty of quarians who’d formed relationships with other races. Turians were the most common simply because they could eat the same food and didn’t have to worry about chirality issues, but asari and humans weren’t unheard of, either. He said that if it was really that dangerous, the quarians would have died out long ago. That made me feel a little better about it and I made sure that we would do everything we could to avoid complications. 

It also made it very clear what he’d meant when he said I hadn’t known what I was asking him and that one-night stands weren’t common. You had to really care about someone to risk death just to be with them. I started doing research of my own and learned that, for quarians, sex wasn’t about blowing off steam or having fun together. They had nerve stim programs for casual encounters that never involved either party removing any clothing. The risks could be minimized by boosting the quarian’s immune system beforehand but it wasn’t a guarantee. Fortunately, Mordin did say that the fact that Kal had had his helmet off outside for several hours and had kissed me and was just sick rather than dying was a good sign. The other good thing I found was that their systems would adapt. I had known that from the conversations about linking suit environments but I guess I’d just assumed it was only with other quarians. Knowing that he’d eventually adapt to me made things easier to process. Still, I didn’t think it would be wise to risk it until after the Collectors had been dealt with.

We had our first real disagreement on the derelict Reaper when we found Legion. Kal had been cleared for duty again, so I took him and Garrus with me. Garrus had dealt with Reaper forces with me before and I thought he’d be able to help me identify if the scientists had become indoctrinated and that was the reason they’d quit checking in. Kal’s inclusion was a no-brainer when we noticed the geth ship alongside the Reaper. It turned out that there wasn’t any question about the science team. Not only had they been indoctrinated, they’d been turned into husks and scions and abominations. 

“Husks and geth,” Garrus said when we encountered the first group of them. “Just like old times.” There was only a trace of sadness in his voice when he said it this time. 

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Throw some pirates in here or maybe Cerberus troops we have to fight against and I’ll start wondering what year it is.”

When we came across Legion for the first time, Garrus and I turned to look at Kal with slack-jawed expressions. I had no idea what to think. It seemed like the geth had just helped us and it was fighting the Reapers. It also talked. I hadn’t known they could do that. All I’d ever heard from them were those weird clicks and whirs and electronic chirps and squeals. Kal seemed as mystified as we were. “Hell if I know. They aren’t supposed to be able to do that,” he said. “As long as it’s helping us, though, we can’t really afford to be picky.”

We didn’t see Legion again until we made it to the core. I’m still not sure how the husks managed to take it down but we were a little bit busy fighting the swarming creatures. Kal’s combat drone helped keep them occupied and Garrus let them get into a group before blasting them all with his concussive shot. I stuck close to Kal and dealt with the ones who managed to make it to the stairs. He was a strong fighter but husks liked to grab and tear and I was afraid that if enough got close to him, they’d rip his suit open. He tolerated my protectiveness because even he admitted that close quarters combat was less than ideal if he could avoid it. 

When we shot out the core and the husks gave us enough of a break, we looked to the geth. It had helped us and I wanted to know why. I said as much and my companions looked at me like I was insane. I could see Reegar’s shock even through his helmet. He shouted, “Ma’am, that’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard! It could hack into EDI’s systems. It could fry the ship or take it over. The damn thing talks. There’s no telling what it could do!”

“That’s why we’re going to bring it!” I said. “It was fighting the Reapers. If we could get it on our side, then—”

“On our side?” Reegar exclaimed. “Those things kill my people, Shepard!”

“And if it tries anything, I’ll blow it to hell myself,” I told him, “but we can’t just throw away a potential ally or leave it here for the Reapers if it isn’t already with them.”

“You’re the captain, ma’am,” he finally said. “I just hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”

___

I went down to engineering after activating Legion and hesitantly accepting it on the team. I needed to tell Kal what I’d done before he heard it from someone else or happened upon it walking around the ship. It had said it would stay in the AI core and EDI was certain she could keep it out of her systems but I still didn’t want to take any chances with it. It might have been willing to help us but I doubted it would have reacted well to someone trying to shoot it and I couldn’t guarantee the crew wouldn’t do so without thinking. Hell, I couldn’t guarantee that _I_ wouldn’t do it out of habit if it caught me unawares. 

Kal had started changing the opacity of his mask when we spoke so that I could see his face. I liked that he let me see his expressions and I liked the open way they flowed across him. Quarians had lived behind masks for so long that guarding their expressions was something they had to consciously work at and it was an effort that Kal didn’t make with me. So when I found myself looking at a darkened mask, I figured he was more upset with me than he wanted to show. I wasn’t surprised when he motioned me into the stairwell. Tali would have chosen the bridge to the drive core but Kal said he kept getting distracted looking for Thane at the window when we went there. 

I was, however, surprised when he pulled me to him with my back to his chest and put his arms around me. The half hood on his mask rubbed up against the side of my face and his hands began to roam. Since Rannoch, we’d held each other a time or two and I’d learned that he liked to run his fingers through my hair, but this was different. One arm held me in place while the fingers of his other hand trailed across my collarbone and dipped between my breasts over my sternum. His hand splayed over my belly and moved down to grip my hip. My breath caught when he brushed against the waistband of my slacks and expelled on a groan when his hand slipped between my legs. The other slid up to cup my breast and my head fell back to his shoulder. “Kal,” I whispered, “what are you doing?”

I felt him shrug as his fingers worked through my pants and he said, “I want to kiss you but I can’t. This is the next best thing.”

“Someone could walk in or hear,” I protested weakly. I couldn’t bring myself to care much at that moment. His fingers were doing magical things even with the barriers of clothing and gloves. 

“No one uses this entrance but me,” he said, “and Jack’s playing poker with Zaeed. She’ll either be in there for a while or come storming in loud enough that we’ll have plenty of warning. Just relax and enjoy.”

The possibility of getting caught was just enough to enhance the excitement while low enough to allow me to stop being the commander for a moment and enjoy the novelty of sneaking around with an incredibly attractive guy when I’d expected a fight instead. “Thought you were mad,” I mumbled as I arched into his touch and choked back a groan. He was really good at this.

“I was. I am,” he said. “Guess I just needed to show you that you’re more important than being pissed off.” He pulled me tighter into him and I could feel his hardness through the suit. It was erotic knowing that he was as turned on as I was and when I reached behind me and slid my hand down his abdomen, his respirator clicked with his sudden intake of breath. He caught my hand and said, “If you start that, I’m not going to be able to stop and I’d rather not spend the run through the Omega 4 relay in the med bay. I plan to be right beside you for that.”

“And if you don’t stop, I’m going to…ohh, god, Kal.” My warning was cut off by his hand sliding into my pants. The glove was a bit strange but I was too far gone to care. He slipped a finger into me and I bit my lip to keep from crying out and alerting Ken and Gabby to what we were doing. 

“You were saying, ma’am?” he asked with a laugh in his voice. 

“If you stop now, I’ll throw you out the airlock!” I threatened weakly as he hit that spot in just the right way and heat coiled in my belly. Either I wasn’t his first human or quarian women were very, very similar to us. Maybe he’d just done his research, too. Whatever it was, he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he said as I strained against his hand.

“Oh, fuck, Kal,” I gasped. He pressed deeper and my hands gripped his arm as I rose onto my toes. “Right there. Just like that. Oh, god.” He added his other finger while his thumb brushed across my clit and I had to cover my mouth to muffle the sounds he drew from me. He said something my translator didn’t catch and I convulsed around him with a shudder. 

He withdrew his hand and turned me so that I was facing him. His enviro-suit was a bit rough against my face but I didn’t care. I could feel his heartbeat and the rhythm was a bit different from a human’s but it was soothing all the same. His arms were tight around me and I felt his mask rest against the top of my head. It was amazing to me just how safe and replete I felt in that moment. I didn’t want to move. Then we heard Jack stomp down the stairs and throw something across her pit. Poker must not have gone well. Kal chuckled and I tipped my head up to look at him. Jack’s voice filtered up through the grated floor. “You assholes better not be fucking up there. I can see you, you know.”

I shook my head and ignored her. Kal pressed the button to clear his mask and I saw the smile he wore. I asked, “So does this mean you’re going to forgive me when I tell you that I activated the geth?”

He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes. “Did you shoot it?”

“No,” I said. “It wants to join us.” I explained to him about the heretics and Legion’s unique platform. He stepped back and rubbed his mask like he was rubbing his chin as he listened. 

Finally, he said, “Well, I’ll be damned, Shepard. I can’t say I like it or that I’m particularly keen to work with it and I can’t promise I won’t shoot the damn thing if it walks up behind me but seems you were right about being able to learn from it. If the geth are willing to fight the Reapers…”

“We need all the help we can get,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “And I can’t promise the aid of my people. We don’t tend to get involved in galactic conflict. Our view tends to be that what happens to the rest of the galaxy doesn’t really affect us since we aren’t a Council race anymore. We take care of ourselves and the rest can go to hell. Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t say I agreed with the attitude. I’m just telling you what it is.”

“We’re going to need them, Kal,” I said.

“I know,” he sighed. “I just don’t know if you’re going to get them. I’m just a soldier, Shepard. I don’t make decisions. Do be careful with that geth, though. We trusted them and look what happened to us.”

“Your people tried to kill them, Kal,” I said carefully. I didn’t want another fight but EDI had given me a certain empathy for synthetics.

“Disable them,” he corrected. “We tried to disable them. They weren’t alive or, at least, we didn’t think they were. I’m not sure what they are now but at the time we were trying to stop them before they became self-aware. I mean, hell, do you think EDI is alive? If you shut it off, are you killing it?”

I crossed my arms as I thought about his question. EDI had begun to display many organic tendencies over the past few months. She’d started to develop a sense of humor, had shown loyalty to us over Cerberus when she’d alerted us to the Illusive Man’s treachery with the Collector ship, had expressed curiosity with Joker. She was self-aware even if she was shackled. Did that mean she was alive? “I don’t know, Kal,” I finally said. “I’m not a philosopher and that goes into some pretty deep questions about what constitutes life in the first place. I don’t think I could just permanently disable her without feeling I’d wronged her, though. She’s made herself as much of the crew as anyone else here.”

“Thank you, Shepard,” EDI said.

“Of course it’s listening in,” Kal grumbled.

EDI said, “I apologize for intruding. Your conversation seemed relevant to me.”

Kal cupped my cheek and said, “Just be careful, Shepard.”


	7. Chapter 7

I took Kal with Legion and me to the heretic’s base. Deciding what to do there was a very hard call. The logical part of me said rewriting sounded like brainwashing and if we could rewrite them once, it could always happen again. If they chose to ally with the Reapers, then that would give us a population of beings that would likely directly target the quarians, especially if Kal’s people decided to go to war. I was conflicted on that, too, after seeing Rannoch for myself but I couldn’t control whether they did or not. All I could do was try to prevent them from having to face down an army of Reaper-controlled geth if they did. The emotional side of me said that I was killing Legion’s people to help Kal’s. Legion’s admonishment not to apply organic reasoning to the problem made the decision easier as did the fact that it was divided amongst its own runtimes. We destroyed them. 

We returned to the shuttle and I informed the rest of the team. I still wasn’t entirely clear on why EDI had thought the entire team needed to take the shuttle while the IFF was tested but it ended up being an extremely good thing as we discovered when she contacted us to let us know what had happened while we were away. My crew was gone, taken by the Collectors in a surprise attack. Karin and Ken and Gabby and Gardner and Kelly and the others who’d agreed to walk into hell with me even though they weren’t soldiers and dying for the mission wasn’t in their typical job description, were now in the grubby hands of the Collectors. Agony and rage didn’t begin to cover what I felt when I walked through my empty ship. The Collectors had made a grave error and they would all die for it. Thane’s description of me as fierce in wrath and a tenacious protector rang in my ears. Yes, wrath described it nicely. I was going to destroy those goddamn bugs and salt the fucking earth in their wake. 

I was pacing in my cabin after a shower when Kal came to me. He saw the rage in my eyes and said, “We’ll get them back, Shepard.”

“I am going to rip their fucking limbs off and beat them to death with them,” I said. “I’m going to crack open their ugly little skulls and bathe in their goddamn blood after I scoop their fucking eyes out with my goddamn omni-blade. I am going to blow that mother-fucking base sky fucking high. Harbinger will rue the fucking day he decided to fuck with Commander fucking Shepard,” I vowed. “You don’t touch my people unless you want to die.”

“What about you?” he said. “What would happen if I touch you?”

I shook my head and said, “I’d hurt you right now, Kal.”

“Our immune systems may be fragile, Shepard,” he said, “but the rest isn’t. I can take it.”

I went to him and put my hand to his mask. “I want to,” I said, “but I can’t afford to have you get sick now. I need you on this.”

“You worry too much, ma’am,” he said. “That’s what immunoboosters are for and I really don’t want to talk about that right now. Quick way to kill the mood.”

I cocked an eyebrow and said, “I hate to break it to you, but there isn’t really a mood to kill unless pissed off counts.”

He took my hands in his and looked down at me. “I know you’re worried about your crew. I know you’re angry at the Collectors. But being worried and angry isn’t going to do anything but drain your energy when we’re doing everything we can right now. We may not make it back from this and if we don’t, I don’t want to die knowing I let my only chance to be with you pass by. Win or lose, I want you. I don’t think that’s translating right. That makes it sound like I just want sex. Khelish is poetic. There are deeper meanings to the words there that don’t...” he sighed. “There isn’t anyone else I would…damn it, I’m screwing this up. I’ve never had to explain this before. Quarians know what it means. I don’t know how to put it in words.”

“I understand, Kal,” I said. Sex for quarians was about emotion, not physical relief. 

“I got to see my homeworld because of you,” he said and I reached up and unsealed his mask. “Keelah, I’ve wanted to do this again since Rannoch.” 

“So have I,” I assured him. 

His head bent and his lips brushed over mine. The fury I’d been feeling flashed over into passion and I rose up on tiptoe to meet him. He pulled me close and nipped at my lower lip. They parted and his tongue swept into my mouth. I slid my hand up to the back of his head only to find the wires and tubes that fed into his suit and I made a sound of frustration. He smiled against my lips and pulled back. I watched closely as he unsealed his helmet and he grinned at me. “Always so curious,” he said. The suit was complicated but he stripped it with the ease of practice and then pushed his hood back from his head and removed his undersuit so that I could see him for the first time. 

He looked a bit nervous and used his fingers to straighten the thick hair that fell almost to his shoulders. I’d never really been a fan of long hair on a man before. I’d always thought it looked too feminine and I preferred it short. On him, though, it looked right. It was silky and shined in the light from the fish tank. When he raked it back, I could see a sharp widow’s peak and then I was distracted by his ears. I’d expected them to be pointy and had pictured something somewhat elven but they weren’t. They were more like a cat than anything and he grinned at my delighted smile. I wanted to touch them and see if they were as soft as they looked. When I said as much, he shook his head and then bent forward laughing so hard that his shoulders shook. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

“If my ego weren’t so damn big already, you’d have crushed it, ma’am,” he answered. “When a man gets naked in front of the woman he cares about for the first time, his ears aren’t exactly what he’s hoping she’ll focus on.”

“But they’re—”

He cut me off. “If you say ‘cute,’ I’m going back down to engineering,” he warned.

I closed my mouth. I really did want to touch his ears, though. Of course, now that he’d called attention to it, there were other things I wanted to touch as well. All of him, in fact. He was nothing short of stunning. I’d had a good idea of his body shape given how fitted their suits were but seeing it in the flesh was something else. His musculature was slightly different from a human male’s and it changed the lines of his body a little bit but the differences just made him more fascinating. It was denser than a human’s which gave him added bulk while still looking lean. The hair on his head and on his eyebrows was all that he had. The rest of him was smooth lavender skin and the lines of his cybernetics continued over his body. He had neither nipples nor a belly button. 

For some reason, his legs fascinated me. They were heavily muscled and I could see now how he was able to move so quickly and agilely. They were similar to a human’s until they reached the knees. The lower half of his legs were longer than a human’s and bowed back in a graceful arc like a turian’s. Rather than ankles, he had fetlocks like a horse that allowed him to stand either flat-footed or perched on his toes. I’d noticed that he tended to stand flat but rose up when he moved. His feet were bifurcated into two toes and that was a little strange but I supposed my five on my flat feet looked odd to him, too. All in all, the word that I would have used to describe him from his broad shoulders to trim waist and graceful lines and curves was elegant and I felt somewhat drab in comparison.

Finally, I allowed my eyes to go where they wanted and I could see the nervousness on his face in my peripheral vision as I took him in. He was close enough to a human male that there was no question about whether it would work between us or not but he was large enough that I wasn’t certain how comfortable it would be. My new body hadn’t had sex before. A ridge of thicker skin ran along the top of it and the underside came to a vee so that it was more triangular than a human’s. It was also slightly curved and I thought that particular aspect of it could prove interesting. He cocked an eyebrow at me as I perused him and said cockily, “Well, do I pass inspection, ma’am?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I still need to evaluate your performance.”

His teeth flashed when he grinned and he reached for me. “You’ve always struck me as the type to lead by example, Captain.” 

“Heaven forbid I be remiss in my duties,” I teased as my hands went to the hidden buttons of my shirt. Now it was my turn to be nervous. Humans were the plain, brown ducks of the galaxy. Our hair made us unique with most species but that didn’t help with a quarian. We weren’t elegant like they were and our skin wasn’t pretty colors. We didn’t have shimmery scales like the drell or glowing eyes like the quarians or even silvery plates like the turians. We were just kind of plain in comparison to the rest. Throw in all of the scars that covered my body from my reconstruction and I wondered what the hell he saw in me. At least the scars glowed. That was…different, I guessed.

He returned my curious perusal but was more physical in his exploration. His fingers traced my ears and down the throat that was much shorter than his, over my collarbone, and down my arms. When they grazed over my breasts and ghosted across my ribcage, I sighed and my eyes closed. He stopped by my shoulder and I looked back at him curiously. His brows furrowed slightly and he leaned in and pressed his lips to the tattoo that matched the monument I’d placed on Alchera. Jack had given it to me the night I’d come back from the frozen planet. The names of my twenty lost crewmates plus Ashley and Tali were listed below it on the left side of my back. She’d also redone the one on the right side that had the unit crest of my squad from Akuze and their names as well. I was running out of room for my dead and I hoped desperately that I wasn’t going to have to add my missing crew to the memorial. I turned to face him. I didn’t want to think about that right now. He understood without me needing to tell him. After all, he’d lost his unit, too. 

His mouth came back down onto mine and, for the first time, our bodies met without barriers between us. His skin was smooth, his muscles solid. His hands roamed over me without hesitation while mine conducted their own exploration. My body felt like it was smoldering under his touch. His mouth trailed down the side of my neck and I gasped and scraped his back when he nipped the line of my shoulder. He chuckled in a self-satisfied way and did it again. My hand came up to fist in his hair and he gave his own pleased groan and dug his fingers into my skin. I pushed him lightly and he fell back onto the bed with a satisfied expression as I climbed up to straddle him. He pulled me back down to him and reached down to stroke my center. 

I scraped my teeth along his angled jaw and ran my tongue down his throat. Their long necks were a particularly sensitive area for quarians and they seemed to share the turian fascination with waists and hips, though they looked for different things. His head fell back to expose his throat and he groaned deeply. I ran my mouth over his chest and down his abdomen to his waist. His thighs clenched and his hands fisted in the sheets. “Shepard,” he gasped as I traced his length first with my fingers and then with my tongue. “Keelah!” 

The surprise in his voice made me look up. “Do quarians not do this?” I asked.

“It’s, ah, generally reserved for…oh, keelah, please don’t stop…for, uh, spouses. Oral contact is more…more dangerous if we haven’t…adapted. You aren’t…oh, shit, Shepard…you aren’t allergic to, ahh, to dextros, are you?”

“No,” I answered without removing my mouth from him and his hips jerked.

“Do that again,” he gasped.

“Talk?” I asked.

“Talk. Hum. Sing. Read a repair manual. Read a menu. I don’t care,” he said with a tone of desperation.

“Ahhh.” He could feel the vibrations from my voice. If he liked that…. I wrapped my hand around his base and focused my attention on creating a thin mass effect field as I continued to use my mouth. He shouted and bucked hard enough that I had to pull back to avoid him hitting the back of my throat. 

“This isn’t going to last long if you do that,” he warned breathlessly so I took pity on him and moved up his body. He still looked a bit dazed as he said, “I’ll return the favor one day.” 

“I’ll hold you to that,” I told him. 

“You do that, ma’am,” he said and wrapped his arms around me and rolled. His hands came up to frame my face and I felt his fingers brush my hair back. I looked up into his beautiful glowing eyes and thought that I could lose myself in them. He didn’t take his gaze from me as he pressed against me and began to roll his hips. He entered me slowly, giving me time to adjust, but there was a determination to his movements and in his face that made me think that not even the Reapers showing up outside the ship would be enough to stop him from filling me and it was my turn to gasp and moan and call his name. 

He bent his head and kissed me as he finally hilted himself inside of me. He was longer and thicker than I was accustomed to but the curves and ridges made it so that he hit in all the right places. He fucked as thoroughly as he kissed and he drove all thoughts of the Collectors and my missing crew from my mind. There was only him and me and the blanket of stars above our heads that made the rest of the galaxy feel very far away. His hands were everywhere and he seemed to know exactly where and how to touch to draw a reaction from me. The way he’d looked at me told me he hadn’t been with a human before and, given the differences in quarian erogenous zones, I knew it wasn’t experience. He was simply attentive and had learned me well through both casual touch and the moments we’d stolen in the engineering stairwell and the elevator and behind the wall in the mess hall late at night. 

I called on every bit of my own research and experience with him to get my own reactions out of him. He liked it rougher and nails down his spine or chest or a fist in his hair drew a hiss from between his teeth and made his movements within me deepen. My tongue on his throat made him purr like a big cat. My teeth on his shoulder, though, brought the greatest reaction. He said my name on a harsh groan and pulled my head aside to sink his own teeth into my shoulder as he slammed into me. “Oh god, Kal!” I shouted as my control frayed and I bowed up into him. He started to pull away and I grabbed his hair and held him in place as I shattered beneath him, crying his name. He growled and bit down deeper as he hilted himself hard inside of me and I felt his body tense. 

A few minutes or hours or days later, I was still floating on the tide of endorphins when he said, “Shit, Shepard. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I asked fuzzily. “Why are you sorry?”

“I bit you,” he said.

“I liked it,” I told him. “I liked it a lot.”

He said hesitantly, “That’s another thing we don’t do in…casual relationships. Blood carries pathogens, so…”

My head cleared immediately and I looked at him with alarm. “You aren’t going to get sick, are you?”

He shrugged. “I might end up with a fever and a sore throat. That’s not why I’m sorry, though. In my culture, that’s like…assuming liberties you haven’t given.”

I propped up on my elbow and said, “It doesn’t have the same connotation for me, so you didn’t take anything from me and I like being bitten. Besides, I did it to you first.”

“You didn’t break skin,” he pointed out.

“Because yours is thicker than mine and my teeth aren’t as sharp,” I countered. “I’m more worried about you getting sick.”

“As long as you’re healthy, I’ll be all right,” he said.

“I got a full scan from Mordin and some sort of prophylactic medication he’d cooked up,” I told him. He still looked worried, so I brushed the hair back from his forehead and kissed him. “That was perfect, Kal,” I said softly and laid my head on his chest. This time, when he rubbed against my hair, it was with his face rather than his mask. He said something that my translator didn’t understand but that sounded graceful and lovely all the same. Khelish was a pretty language. 

His hands drifted lightly down my side and over my back. After a few moments, he moved to my abdomen and said, “Why do you have a hole in your stomach?”

I laughed and said, “It’s not a hole. Look.” He rolled me onto my back and bent over me. His hair fanned across my chest and I laughed lightly at his fingers’ curious exploration. (He says I giggled. I did _not_ giggle. I don’t giggle. Ever.) I explained it to him and then used the opportunity to indulge my own curiosity. His ears were soft and velvety and I could see the network of blood vessels through the smooth skin. His eyes drifted closed and he rubbed up against my hand. “Like a cat,” I insisted. 

“What the hell is a cat?” he asked so I pulled up my omni-tool and showed him. “It’s cute,” he said in disgust. 

“That’s a serval. It’s a predator,” I told him. I pulled up another image and said, “How’s this? It’s a cheetah. It’s the fastest land animal on Earth.”

“The ears are too short,” he said so I showed him a caracal. “I don’t have tufts. Humans are the furry ones,” he said and I rolled my eyes.

“Imagine it without the fur,” I told him. 

He pulled my arm over and started searching the extranet for big Earth cats. “Here we go,” he finally said. “That’s what I’m talking about. This thing could take down an elcor. What is it?”

“You do not look like a tiger,” I said.

“I have stripes,” he said. “What about this one?”

“You definitely don’t look like a lion,” I answered with a chuckle.

“I don’t look like any of these, Shepard,” he said and then cocked his head. “Maybe the nose. A little. If you squint. You know, everyone says that humans look like—”

“If you call me a pyjak, I will kick you out of my bed,” I told him. 

“I was going to say you look nothing like one. You don’t have stripes. Unless I missed something. Maybe I should check,” he said with a grin and leaned over me. 

His mouth had just locked onto my nipple when Joker came over the comm. “Hey, Commander? We’re thirty minutes out. You might want to gear up.”

“Shit,” I grumbled. Kal’s arms wrapped around me and his mouth crashed into mine. There was nothing gentle or leisurely about this. This was desperate and hungry and demanding. This was a kiss that knew that it might be the last one and was determined that it be remembered. I returned it with interest and we drew away breathless. 

We geared up together. I’d never had anyone to share this time with me before. Gearing up for a high risk mission—not that we had many low-risk ones but Ilos and the Battle of the Citadel were particularly on my mind—was a tense thing. There was a focus and determination to preparing to go to war but there was also that voice in the back of your head that told you to pay special attention. It made all of the familiar lines of your surroundings new again, the colors brighter, the sounds clearer, the environment itself more poignant because you knew with a special sort of clarity that there was a very good chance that it was the last time. 

In our line of work, every day could be our last, every time the last time, but that was a knowledge you had to put out of your mind. People who say to live each moment like it’s your last have never lived their lives on a precipice between life and death as thin as the edge on an omni-blade. Living with the constant conscious awareness of the fragility of life was a recipe for disaster. I’d known people who’d lived like that and they either went insane or they burned out. The flip side to everything mattering with morbid urgency for an extended period of time is that eventually you get to a point where nothing matters at all. So this wasn’t a feeling I let myself experience often and, when it did come, it hit me harder for it. Kal’s presence kept me focused until, just before he replaced his mask, he came in for one more kiss. “For luck,” he said.

“I don’t need luck,” I replied with a cockiness I didn’t truly feel. “I have ammo.”

“Didn’t realize I was dating Grunt now, ma’am,” he said with a grin. 

I performed a final check on my weapons and clipped them onto my armor. “You’re lucky you’re so damn cute,” I told him and he sighed. He brought his mask up and I stopped him. “Wait. I have something for you and I want to see your face.”

He looked at me curiously as I opened a drawer in my desk and brought out a velvet pouch. I handed it to him and he began to say something as he opened the pouch but stopped as the object inside dropped into his hand. His lips parted and his eyes darted to me before looking down again at his gift. I’d kept the tiny yellow flowers I’d picked on Rannoch in water so that they’d stayed fresh and had gotten them cast in a disc of clear resin the size of a coin. Kasumi had recommended a place on the Citadel for me to get it done and I’d had it commissioned the next time we’d gone on shore leave. I ran my hand through my hair, hoping that I hadn’t stepped over some unspoken boundary and said, “I know flowers aren’t exactly manly and I know quarians don’t keep trinkets but you liked them so much and I thought it would be a piece of home you could keep with you.”

He looked as if he was going to say something a few times but stopped. Finally, he pulled his eyes away from the disc and looked up at me. “Shepard, I…I don’t know what to say. This is…it’s perfect. You’re perfect. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said and stood on tiptoe to brush my lips against his. He tucked it into a pocket in his suit and replaced his mask with a swiftness that made me think there was an emotion on his face he didn’t want me to see. His hand brushed over the pocket and then over my cheek before he turned and we left the cabin.


	8. Chapter 8

We made it back through the relay with our crew intact, the _Normandy_ heavily damaged, and moments to spare. Aria was feeling grateful to me for helping her with Patriarch, so she allowed us to dock on Omega for repairs. It wasn’t my favorite place in the galaxy for shore leave and I knew Garrus hated it but Joker and EDI were worried about making another relay jump before we’d gotten the ship shored up and I agreed. I spent most of it in the med bay with Kal, who’d pushed through the mission and remained by my side despite a raging fever. Mordin’s treatments helped and it didn’t last long, fortunately. We patched up enough to make it to Ilium and took a real shore leave there. It wasn’t much better than Omega, but at least it was clean. I was all right with the place until someone overheard Kal calling me ma’am and assumed he was an indentured servant. I could even overlook that as ignorance when it didn’t seem to bother him as every quarian I’d seen there was in some kind of contract but then the asari touched him and asked to buy him from me. 

Gratuitous use of my Spectre status and Detective Anaya’s support kept me out of jail. Kal found it amusing. I was glad someone did. Quarians were very affectionate among their own people and people they cared about. Tali had hugged me on more than one occasion and didn’t hesitate to rest her head against my shoulder or prop a forearm there. Kal maintained a respectful distance around the crew and on missions but when we were alone or on shore leave or just with our friends, he would hold my hand or put an arm around my waist or simply touch my elbow. He really liked to come up behind me and put his arms around me if I was standing at my desk or somewhere he considered it appropriate. They did not, however, like to be touched by random strangers. The enviro-suits tended to have one of two effects. They either seemed to discourage touch or draw it at random. I’d seen women try to touch Tali’s hood more than once and men seemed to view the tightness of the suit as an invitation. With Kal, it was generally women and they weren’t interested in the fabric. I didn’t care that women flirted with him. He was handsome even with the mask covering his face. I did care that they invaded his space when I knew it made him uncomfortable. He was man enough to handle it himself but sometimes even I have my limits.

Once the ship was repaired, Liara and I began our hunt for the Shadow Broker. If we hadn’t already planned to kill him for what he’d done to Feron and tried to do to me, I’d have done it simply for what he said about Kal. _I’m surprised you brought the quarian, T’Soni. His supposed leadership on Haestrom got both his team and your friend Tali’Zorah killed._ That was a low blow. Liara came up to my cabin later and I wasn’t entirely surprised to find that she’d figured out the relationship between us. I think it had probably been given away by the way I shouted his name when that damn table hit him. She asked if I was fighting for the chance to give him a home. It was insightful and told me just how much my friend had grown up. 

Kal came after she left. He’d begun staying in my cabin after he was released from the med bay. We’d taken advantage of the down time to work on…adapting his immune system, so to speak, but hadn’t been together since we’d begun tracking down the Shadow Broker. I wanted him with me in a fight and I didn’t want him to have to do it sick again. He adjusted the opacity on his mask and, while his glowing eyes didn’t often reveal emotion unless they were—quite literally—flashing with anger, his face as a whole was expressive and I could see the guilt and doubt written there. If I could have killed the Shadow Broker twice, I would have. 

He sat down on the couch beside me and muttered, “Screw it,” before taking off his mask and stripping out of his suit. I expected him to pull me into his arms. I didn’t expect him to lie down on the couch and put his head in my lap. I liked it, though. It was a normal couple thing to do and one we didn’t get the opportunity for often as we generally tried to limit his time out of his suit and we usually had other things to do during that time. This was nice, however, and I ran my fingers through his silky hair. Its length was beginning to grow on me, though I did occasionally try to imagine how he would look with it shorter. I decided he’d be gorgeous no matter what he did with his hair and it was very nice in my hands. He closed his eyes and brought an arm up to wrap around my waist. What I didn’t like was the pain on his face.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

“I don’t need to tell you,” he said and traced over the names on my back. “If anyone understands, it’s you.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Kal,” I said. “You’re a good leader.”

He snorted and said, “Yeah. That’s why you had to come in and drag my ass out of the fire. You did with two people what I couldn’t do with an entire squad.”

I grasped his jaw and held it until he opened his eyes and looked at me. “You were injured, sick, and had been pinned down for days. You also didn’t have a damn nuke launcher strapped to your back. You also hadn’t spent almost a year fighting enough of those damn things to lose count. Yeah, I can do things with two people that others can’t do with a damn platoon. But that doesn’t mean I always succeed or that I never lose people. Who’d I choose to lead the second fire team?”

“Garrus,” he answered.

“Exactly,” I said. “Do you know where I picked Garrus up for this mission?” He shook his head. “I didn’t think so. He doesn’t like to talk about it. After I died, Garrus went to Omega and became a vigilante. He formed a squad of a dozen men including himself. Eleven of those men are dead. Ten of them died on Omega. The eleventh died on the Citadel when we found the traitor. He lost his entire squad and I still chose him to lead and he did a damn fine job of it. I’d have picked you for it if I hadn’t wanted you on my team with me.”

“Why?” he asked.

I said, “When I lost my squad on Akuze, they called me a hero for surviving and sent me to N7 training. I asked Anderson that same question. He said that there isn’t a single N7 that hasn’t sacrificed either themselves or their men at least once because nothing else makes the burden of leadership so real. You sacrificed your men to keep Tali safe and you did so for longer than the vast majority could have against odds that would have made a lesser man run in fear. Even knowing that she was dead, you didn’t abandon her. You knew she was gone. You could have retreated then and no one would have blamed you. You didn’t because your job wasn’t finished. You’re a damn good leader, Kal’Reegar vas Tonbay nar Idenna and don’t you dare let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said and pulled me down beside him. “Thank you,” he whispered. 

“Any time,” I told him. 

He kissed me and removed my clothing in an almost lazy fashion as my hands roamed over his skin. We took our time about it. I’d told the Illusive Man to fuck off. I wasn’t in the Alliance. The Council still wasn’t sure what to do with me. Liara was safely ensconced aboard the Shadow Broker’s ship. We’d sent the Collectors to hell. We needed to begin preparing our people for the Reapers soon but, for now, we had a few days of peace with nothing to do and nowhere to be, no battles to fight, no colonies to save, no traps to walk into, no suicide missions to survive. There was no reason to rush. 

We could afford to be languid in our exploration of each other, to move leisurely together, to let the heat build to a gentle warmth rather than fanning the flames into a roaring inferno. Gasps and sighs took the place of moans and shouts and our hands spent more time on each other’s faces or entwined together than they did flying over each other’s bodies. There was passion there, of course, but the urgency of need was replaced by something softer and more liquid, something that filled us rather than consuming us, something that touched the empty places inside of us. I didn’t feel ready to put a name to it yet but the way his eyes held mine and the gentleness of his touch told me he felt it, too. Hell, the fact that he was here at all, unmasked and bare, was enough that I should have known it all along. 

Our orgasms together were usually something akin to storm surge crashing against the breakers but there was something to be said for the way this one rolled us gently onto the shore. We held each other for a long time afterward and I reveled in the caress of his breath against my neck. It made me recognize all of the things I’d taken for granted with others in the past. The warmth of my lover’s breath, the slide of the skin of his hand against mine, the ability to see his face without restriction, the brush of his lips against my brow, the sound of his bare voice, were all things I’d accepted without question. With a partner who lived most of his life in a suit, these little things became all the more precious. He asked what I was thinking about and I told him haltingly.

“Having regrets?” he asked.

“None at all,” I assured him. “I’m just appreciating the little things.”

“I know what you mean,” he said and brushed his nose against my hair.


	9. Chapter 9

Our peace didn’t last long. It never does. Admiral Hackett contacted me asking for a favor that ended up costing 304,942 lives. I didn’t have enough skin to list them all even if I’d known their names. The night I came back, Kal held me through the storm. I think that was the night I finally let myself admit I loved him. He saw the worst part of me, the part that no one else gets to see, and he stayed steady. He was the rock that got me through the six months of interrogations and imprisonment that followed. He was the rock that got me through the Reapers’ arrival on Earth and the only reason I was able to handle leaving it behind. I’d never cared much about Earth before meeting Kal but his influence and half a year on the planet had changed that. Leaving my people behind was hard but I knew he was out there somewhere and that we would find each other.

We did, but it took months. I heard rumors about the Migrant Fleet that made me suspect they had moved forward on their war to reclaim Rannoch but there was no word from him. I got Liara from Mars, Garrus from Menae, Mordin from Sur’Kesh, and Wrex on Tuchanka. I killed a Reaper with a thresher maw and took down more harvesters than I’d ever imagined. I brokered peace between the turians and the krogan and I fought Cerberus every damn step of the way. I stopped a coup on the Citadel and watched Thane die and allowed Kaidan back onto the crew. I rescued Jack and Jacob and stopped Samara from killing herself. Kasumi, Jondam Bau, and I stopped an indoctrinated hanar from destroying Kahje and Zaeed from killing the volus ambassador for Cerberus. I woke up a Prothean who’d been in stasis for fifty thousand years. Still, I had no word from Kal. I wondered if he was fighting beside his people or if he’d broken off from them to fight the Reapers. 

Finally, the quarians contacted Hackett and said they wanted to talk. I was a nervous wreck as we made our way to the Migrant Fleet’s coordinates. As I’d suspected, they’d decided to go to war with the geth. The admirals that I’d met on the Flotilla boarded my ship and, fortunately, Rael’Zorah wasn’t with them. I’d have let Javik toss him out the airlock. Then Raan said something about their newest admiral giving his help and my head came up fast enough that anyone watching would have realized there was more than friendship there. My heart caught in my throat as his confident walk carried him onto the ship. I didn’t have to see his face to know he was smiling when he said, “Kal’Reegar vas Tonbay reporting for duty, ma’am.”

“Kal,” I said and couldn’t keep the joy out of my voice. 

I somehow managed to focus on the briefing and make a plan to get his people out of the shitstorm they’d put themselves into. Time dragged until I was finally able to get him up into my cabin. We were awkward at first. It had been almost a year since we’d seen each other and neither of us knew how to react or where the other stood. “Admiral Reegar, huh?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. He shrugged a shoulder. Of course he wouldn’t think it was a big deal. He probably didn’t even think he deserved it. 

He said, “They needed a replacement for Tali’s father. My clan has a history of distinguished military service and Raan and Koris wanted someone to help oppose Gerrel and Xen. It wasn’t enough, unfortunately.” He sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing, Shepard. I’m just a soldier. I’ve got questions beyond counting and seventeen million lives riding on the answers. I don’t know how you do it.”

I got that question a lot. I still get that question a lot. The answer was always the same. “I think about the people I care about. The people I love.” My people were what got me through every bit of it and kept me sane. 

He stepped toward me and said, “And am I one of those people, Shepard?”

“Of course you are, Kal,” I said and went to him. “Am I one of yours?”

“Of course,” he said as if it was obvious. “I’ve always loved you.”

“You have?” I asked. That was news. I had suspected that it had gotten to that point but he’d never said.

“You didn’t know?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused. He adjusted his mask so that I could see his face. “I was on my homeworld for the first time in my life and couldn’t take my eyes off of you. I was with you without my suit. I bit you. I thought you knew.”

“I didn’t want to assume,” I said. “You have to tell a girl these things, Kal.”

“Oh,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ve never loved anyone before. Not sure exactly what the protocol is here.”

I went into his arms then and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like coming home. “I love you, too, Kal,” I said. His arms came around me and held me tightly and then he was picking me up and striding purposefully toward the bed. He removed his mask and I unsealed his helmet and pushed his hood back. I needed to see him. “Is this okay?” I asked. I didn’t want him getting sick when we had a war to fight.

“I might have planned ahead for this eventuality,” he admitted. 

“Good,” I said. “I might have, too.”

We undressed each other quickly around clashing lips and teeth and tongues and hands that shook with our urgency. We both knew this wasn’t going to last long. We’d been apart for too long and seen too much in the interim. We needed to reconnect. His hand moved between my legs and I cried out as he slipped his finger into me. When I tried to touch him, he stopped me and said that it would be over too quickly if I did. He quirked his finger and I shattered. Before I’d had time to catch my breath, he was pushing into me and didn’t stop until he was buried to the hilt. Only then did he pause and lower his forehead to mine, breathing heavily. “I missed you,” he whispered.

“I missed you, too,” I said, trailing my fingers through his hair. “God, how I missed you.”

His arms tightened around me and he rolled his hips. There wasn’t room for a breath of air to come between us as we moved together. The urgency returned and we clung to each other as we spiraled up together. I didn’t even try to muffle my cries as he drove into me. He tugged my head to the side and placed his teeth deliberately on my shoulder and then waited. “Do it,” I gasped. “Please.”

“Are you sure?” he asked against my skin. 

I’d done some research. I knew what I was asking this time. Back when quarians were predatory and had a mouth full of teeth that could rival Javik’s, before the Migrant Fleet and the suits, they’d marked their bondmates. It had taken a new meaning on the Flotilla where the only person who could see it was the one who saw them out of their suits and where sharing of air was considered intimate and bodily fluids even more so. It was now a tradition undertaken on the wedding night. No quarian would touch another who revealed a mark unless their partner was known to be dead. This wasn’t just something sexual and fun. This was commitment.

“I’m sure,” I said. “Are you?”

“Yes,” he said and kissed my shoulder. “I might have prepared for this eventuality as well. More hoping than anything but...I love you Shepard,” he said and his teeth pierced my skin. The combination of sensation and meaning overwhelmed me and I came apart. He tilted his own head to the side, offering me his own shoulder. 

“It’ll hurt,” I warned when I could breathe. “Human teeth aren’t designed to pierce.”

“I’ve been shot,” he scoffed. “I can handle a bite.”

I did it as cleanly as I could but still winced at the force required to get through his denser skin. He didn’t seem to mind, though, if his deep moans and the way he pushed into me were any indication. I stopped when I tasted the tang of his blood on my tongue. He thrust once, twice, and then tensed and shuddered as his orgasm shot through him. He dropped his forehead to my shoulder and kissed the mark he’d left. I trembled with the depth of my emotion. He was here. He was here. He was home. He was mine and I was his. 

___

His amazement at seeing Rannoch again wasn’t lessened by having been there once. The pain of knowing the Reapers were there in addition to the geth was hard to bear. I had a harder time dealing with the idea of war with the geth since meeting Legion and an even harder time after going into the geth consensus and seeing their side of the first war. The geth had been done a great wrong. I couldn’t support what amounted to genocide but I also wanted Kal to have a home. When I told him that, he cupped my face and said, “I already have a home.” 

“You said it yourself, Kal,” I said. “We need to find another way. There has to be a third option here. The geth don’t want to fight your people unless they’re forced to do so. You shouldn’t be fighting each other. You should be fighting the Reapers together.”

He sighed and said, “I know but the others won’t listen. Koris might but even Raan is committed now that we’ve started. If we stop now without a treaty in place, my people will die. The geth won’t agree to a treaty unless we stop. What do we do?”

“We start by getting rid of that damn Reaper signal,” I said. “The geth won’t stop as long as the Reapers are controlling them.”

That was how I ended up on a cliff with a dead Reaper in front of me and enough adrenaline in my veins to move a mountain with my lover’s eyes begging me to save his people. If I stopped Legion, the geth would die. If I allowed him to continue, the quarians would die. The quarians were the aggressors. The geth were simply defending themselves. My heart and soul belonged to the quarian beside me. His family was on one of the ships above us. I looked at Kal. “Do you trust me?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. He closed his eyes behind the mask when I told Legion to continue the upload. I prayed then to a god I’d stopped believing in long ago. _Please let this work. Don’t let me have just sentenced his people to death._ Kal, Koris, and Raan added their voices to mine as I put everything I had into trying to convince the other admirals to stop their insanity, to believe for just one second that this was possible. Kal’s hand gripped my arm tightly. I felt his sigh of relief as much as I heard it when Han’Gerrel agreed to stand down. The fighting stopped. The three-hundred-year-old war ended not with a bang, but with a sigh.

When the negotiations were finished and we were alone, Kal led me down off of the cliff. We stopped by the rocks where we’d laid Tali to rest over a year ago and paid our respects. Then we moved to the stream and Kal turned to me. “Right here,” he said. “This is where we were standing when I realized I loved you.” He removed his mask and tilted his face up to the sun once more and I saw again that look of wonder and peace. I was still marveling over it when he knelt in front of me and said, “I know human tradition calls for a ring and some romantic speech. I don’t have one. Not exactly, at least. What I do have is this.” He opened his hand and revealed what looked like a seal for my hardsuit. He said, “I know it scared the shit out of you to go through that docking tube. What you went through on the first _Normandy_ is every quarian’s worst nightmares rolled into one. I can’t promise you’ll never get spaced again but I can promise you’ll never have to worry about a seal rupture. I can promise you’ll be able to breathe. And I can promise I’ll come for you. Will you marry me, Shepard vas Normandy?”

We were soldiers. Maybe someone else would have appreciated a flowery speech and promises of undying devotion. I didn’t need it. He was promising to take on my one real fear. That meant more to me than any poem or pretty speech and was as pure a declaration of love as I’d ever heard. I nodded as I struggled to push the words out of my throat. “Yes, Kal’Reegar vas Rannoch.”

“It’ll be vas Normandy, ma’am, if that’s all right with you,” he said. “This is my homeworld but you are my home.”

I cried. I’m not ashamed of it. It was beautiful and wonderful and perfect and I could all but see Tali over his shoulder smiling at me with the face of an angel.  
   
He wanted to stay on the _Normandy_ but the Fleet had promised aid to Palaven. He had a unit to lead and he went with them. Before he did, though, we stood together in front of Tali’s rock, in the spot we’d claimed for our future home, while Admiral Shala’Raan vas Tonbay joined us together. Kal wore the new gold enviro-suit that told of his change in status but removed his mask and Liara loaned me a dress. Raan named us Admiral Kal’Reegar and Commander Shepard’Reegar vas Normandy in front of our friends and family. Garrus gave me away. Liara stood as my maid of honor. Kal’s grandfather stood with him as the head of his clan. I got to meet his parents. That was more intimidating to me than facing down the Reaper. They were nice people and, to my surprise, didn’t mind their son marrying a human. I guess I did get them a homeworld, after all. The geth attended. Hackett had ordered us into dry dock on the Citadel for repairs and much-needed shore leave, so we decided it would be a good time for the honeymoon. Hell, with this war, we both knew it might have been the only time.


	10. Chapter 10

Our honeymoon didn’t go exactly as planned. Wasn’t that both the understatement of the century and the story of my life? Joker had asked me to come to dinner with him and talk about some things so, after christening the new apartment with my new husband, I went to meet my pilot. Kal didn’t mind since he couldn’t eat anything at the sushi restaurant anyway. He did, however, mind when a disagreement with some mercenaries left me falling through a fish tank. You see, the mercenaries thought I needed to die. I disagreed. Violently and with fervor. By the way, charging a fully armored man while wearing a dress and heels and carrying nothing but a pistol is not advisable. I was happier than I wanted to admit when my knight in shining…enviro-suit found me. He thought it was hilariously entertaining once he’d ascertained that I was all right. Damn soldier. 

The upside to fighting your own clone while she tries to steal your life is that you find out who your real friends are. They’d shown up for the war and they’d stood by me through a hell of a lot but there was something heartwarming about having my crew—old and new—fighting together just to help me. This wasn’t war. This wasn’t something that threatened the galaxy. This was entirely about me and they were still there. The other benefit was getting to attend a fancy party with Kal. That the host ended up dead rather than giving us the information we needed was a bit of a letdown but the party was still all right. Altogether, it was a fun little break from the norm. We got to kill a bunch of mercs, took ourselves on a not-quite-guided tour of the Citadel Archives, had some laughs, killed some more mercenaries, and ultimately kept the bitch from stealing my ship and sending my poor space hamster to animal control. A warship isn’t an appropriate place for a hamster, my ass. 

I’d thought that we’d get to rest once the clone was dealt with but my squad wanted to spend some downtime with me. When I apologized to Kal, he just smiled at me through the mask and said I wouldn’t be me without them. I loved him even more for understanding that. Of course, I should have known a quarian would get it. They live their lives surrounded by people. Privacy is almost unheard of and when the needs of others always come first, it doesn’t even occur to them to think that others shouldn’t be included. I did, however, make sure to carve out some time just for us.

I wanted to do something special for him. I know how bad military rations are and can’t imagine having to eat the dextro paste that makes up the primary staple of their diet, so I decided that we were going to eat a meal together like a normal damn family and that I was going to cook it. I didn’t get that many opportunities to do wifely things. I’m Commander Shepard. I survived a suicide mission. How hard could making dinner for my husband be? As it turns out, pretty damn hard. I had to enlist Garrus’ help to come up with the menu and get the supplies since I knew nothing about dextro foods and which ones went well together. I didn’t want to do the dextro equivalent of accidentally putting chocolate sauce on mashed potatoes. He offered to help with preparation but I turned him down. 

Two hours later, I was standing in the kitchen when Kal walked in. I figured that the way he went for his rifle and automatically assumed that there’d been a firefight while he was away meant that I was doing something wrong. It took me a few minutes to convince him that I was actually cooking and not trying to find a new way to kill the Reapers and I had just about decided that I could get away with shooting him just a little bit when he put his arms around me. He said warmly, “You have _tosca_ on your face, nelai.”

“What did you just call me?” I asked. 

“Nelai,” he said again. “Wife. Neloi is husband. It, uh, literally means ‘one who walks the stars with me.’”

“Khelish is so pretty,” I said as I tried to rub the tosca from my face. He stopped me and removed his helmet, something that had become more common since his system had finally adapted to me, to lean down and trail his lips over my cheek and then lick the purple stuff from my jaw where I’d apparently rubbed it. I forgot all about the meal I was trying to prepare and he didn’t seem to care that my hands were covered in a brown flour-like substance called veshni when my arms came up to circle his neck. He nipped my throat and pushed the bowl I’d been mixing things in aside so that he could deposit me on the counter. I was getting veshni on my pants but couldn’t have brought myself to care any less. They would wash. They didn’t stay on for long in any case. 

The granite counter was cool against my ass but I was quickly distracted by the sound of his gloves dropping to the floor and a finger sliding into me as his other hand dipped beneath my shirt to slide up over my ribcage. His mouth was doing distracting things to my neck and I wiped my hands on my shirt before burying them in his mane of dark hair. His thumb grazed over my clit and his hand pressed between my shoulder blades to hold me up as my body arched into him. My heel on the counter gave me leverage to move against him while opening me further for his exploration and he groaned when I reached down to unseal his suit enough to free him and took him in my hand. As much as I loved having his bare skin against mine, sometimes I just wanted him inside me badly enough that taking the time to undress seemed like a waste. This was one of those times. 

He wasn’t the only one whose body had adapted and he was able to slide into me with a single smooth stroke that had me calling out his name. His arm linked under my knee and held me open for him and I rode him helplessly. His thrusts were quick and deep and hard. The angle I was at had him hitting all of the right places and quickly turned me into a writhing, moaning mess. My head fell back as my spine bowed over his supporting hand and he reached over and dipped his finger into one of the bowls. He spread the tosca over my nipple and then closed his mouth over it and sucked. He paid the same attention to the other and then painted a line down my sternum and licked it clean. 

I made a sound of frustration when he withdrew from me but my eyes widened when he grinned wickedly and drew more of the tosca over my labia. He knelt down and licked a line from my ankle to my thigh before nipping behind my knee and looking up at me with those beautiful glowing eyes. “I did promise to return the favor one day, ma’am,” he said and then his mouth was on me and whatever response I’d had died in my throat as I gripped his hair and dug my heels into his back. He’d clearly done his research or maybe he just knew me that well because, for someone who’d never done that before, he sure as hell seemed like he knew what he was doing. He knew where to lick and where to nuzzle and where to scrape his teeth over my skin. He didn’t have to ask when to slide a finger into me or when to change the pressure and when not to change a single thing. I’m fairly certain we scandalized the neighbors and they might have started to wonder when a consort had moved in next door. I didn’t care. All that mattered was Kal’s mouth on me and his finger inside of me and his eyes glowing up at me as he watched me unravel in his care. 

His own control was frayed by the time he joined his body with mine again and his hands were rough as they turned me so that I was bent over the counter and scrabbling for purchase against the smooth surface. I finally grabbed the edge of the bar and he used his hand to protect my belly from the hard edge of the counter as he pounded into me from behind. His mouth was on my neck and his free hand roamed my body and his voice wrapped me in midnight as he turned off my translator and spoke to me in his own lilting tongue. I came calling his name and he made mine sound like music.

Later, we cleaned up and I turned my attention back to the task he’d so wonderfully interrupted. He rested his chin on my shoulder with his arms around my waist and I said, “All right, so I’ve never done this before. How, exactly, am I supposed to mix the fel’al with the tosca without breaking the shell and getting the veshni wet?”

“I have no idea, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t cook.”

“Will you quit calling me ma’am already?” I asked as I read the instructions again. “We’re married. Besides, you outrank me now.”

He nuzzled my neck and said, “I’ll work on that, ma’am.”

“You just like saying it,” I accused as I swatted his hand away from the tosca. 

“Guilty as charged,” he admitted happily and stopped trying to get into the food and instead began rubbing small circles on my hip.

“Keep that up and we’ll go for round two and you’ll be stuck with paste for dinner again,” I warned. 

“I’d be all right with that,” he said. 

“Well, I wouldn’t,” I told him. “Round two can wait. I’m your wife, damn it, and I’m going to make you dinner. I’m Commander fucking Shepard’Reegar vas Normandy and I will not be defeated by a…what is a fel’al anyway?”

“You don’t want to know,” he laughed. 

In the end, I called Garrus. It turned out that he was a hell of a cook. He said his choices had been to either learn or settle for ration bars considering the amount of time he’d spent on a human ship over the past few years. I traded him a new mod for his sniper rifle in exchange for cooking lessons. He accused me of being sweet. I laughed at him. No one had ever described me as anything as nice as sweet. Kal had to put his helmet back on with Garrus there but he’d begun to keep it clear with certain members of the crew he considered friends and I had no problem seeing the affectionate look on his face as he watched me learn how to prepare food for him. When it was ready and I’d much more successfully made something for myself as well, Garrus took a plate for himself and left. He said something about meeting that turian woman I’d gotten him to talk to for drinks later. 

We threw a party on our last night of shore leave. Garrus and Zaeed spent most of the time booby-trapping my apartment while Liara and Kaidan debated the merits of biotics versus brute strength with Vega. Samara meditated alone for most of it but assured me she was enjoying herself and Kasumi popped in and out of conversations and had Samantha half-convinced the apartment was haunted. Jack, Wrex, and Grunt had a drinking contest and, later, Zaeed, Wrex, and Javik decided to do target practice in the bar. Jacob asked for my help in proposing to Brynn and Kal and Kaidan spent almost an hour debating the benefits and drawbacks of some kind of tech I’d never heard of. Cortez tried to talk Joker into going to the shooting range with him. For the most part, I sat back and watched with EDI. All of my surviving crew from both of my previous missions on the _Normandy_ were there and it made the absence of those we’d lost even more apparent. I found myself missing Mordin and Thane and, of course, Tali. 

That night, after everyone else had passed out, Kal and I retreated to our bedroom. There was something different in our joining that night. We knew it was probably the last time we’d be together before the end of the war and we didn’t want to miss a moment of it. We fought sleep as we loved each other late into the night cycle and when it finally claimed us, we fell into it wrapped tightly around each other. 

A more solemn group joined me at the railing of the docking bay where I stood overlooking the _Normandy_ and thinking back on the things she’d taken us through and all of the things she had given me. Jacob had once told me that the _Normandy_ was my first love. He was wrong but not by much. That ship had carried my crew and me through impossible situations. She had brought me to Kal. She had given me my family. She’d been the site of an end to two wars that were centuries old. She had been a place of peace and an instrument of destruction. She was as much my home as any place could possibly be. Now I was about to ask her to go once more into the breach and to bring me back to my real home, to bring my people back safely, to end this damn war once and for all. 

Kal’s arm slipped around my waist and I leaned my head against his shoulder. He said, “Of all the ships I’ve lived on in my lifetime, that one is the best. She gave me you.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” I told him. “It’s been a hell of a ride, hasn’t it?”

“It’s not over yet,” he said. “You’ll finish it, though. I know you will. And I’ll be waiting for you when it’s finished. Come back to me, you hear me, nelai?”

I nodded though we both knew I couldn’t promise that. “You, too, neloi,” I said. “I don’t want to walk the stars alone anymore. I love you.”

“You never will,” he said. “I love you, too. Now, go. Crush those bastards.”

“Give ‘em hell, Kal,” I told him and followed my crew onto our ship.


	11. Chapter 11

Councilor Tevos sent us to Thessia. We were hopeful going in that we were about to find the key that would end the war. That hope was crushed when Kai Leng showed back up and took the Prothean VI. Liara distracted herself from the fall of her homeworld by fighting with Javik over ancient history. Samantha directed us to Horizon. I marveled bleakly at how quickly things could go from hopeful to hopeless in a matter of moments. My crew did their best to bolster me. Kal’s team had been assigned to repairing and defending comm towers on Palaven so we were able to communicate more regularly than most. When I messaged him about Thessia, though, his reply was long enough in coming to have me worried. 

We hit Horizon and I learned what Miranda had been up to. More, I learned what her father had been up to. The place was a nightmare. In some ways, it was worse than anything we’d seen thus far because this wasn’t done by Reapers or Collectors. It was done by my own people. Humans had committed these atrocities on other humans. There was no excuse for it, no forgiving it, and I had worked for the bastard in charge. My very soul felt dirty. It was awful. We did, at least, get a lead on Kai Leng thanks to Miranda’s intervention. The woman was brilliant and that hadn’t changed. I still felt like I was taking one hit after another. Like being out of cover with an asari commando firing rockets at me faster than I could move out of the way. 

When I walked onto the bridge to find Sam looking at me like someone had kicked her favorite puppy and her hand shot out to stop me from checking my messages, I knew that I was about to take the biggest hit of them all. That knowledge was backed up when Liara came off of the lift behind me and asked to speak with me privately. Garrus was with her. I wanted to put my hands over my ears and scream to keep from hearing the words I knew were coming. They remained silent as the lift carried us to my cabin and my steps were heavy as I led them in. “Just say it,” I said dully, closing my eyes as if that could ward off the shattering of my soul. 

“I’m so sorry, Shepard,” Liara said softly. “Kal’Reegar is dead.”

My mind screamed but somehow my voice was steady if choked when I said, “How?”

Garrus said quietly, “Victus said his team sacrificed themselves to hold a comm relay until reinforcements could arrive to keep it from falling. If we’d lost that relay, we would have lost our fleet.”

Liara said gently, “Admiral Raan has sent you a message. I just thought you should hear it from us first.”

“Thanks,” I managed to get out past the scream rising in my throat. 

They looked at each other and Garrus said, “We’re here, you know, if you need us. You don’t have to do this alone. The galaxy won’t fall if you lean on us.”

I nodded without looking at them and went to my terminal. They withdrew deeper into the cabin to give me privacy without leaving me alone. I didn’t know whether I wanted them to stay or go so I let them take a seat on the couch and pulled up the message from Raan.

 _ **FROM:** Admiral Shala’Raan vas Rannoch_  
_**TO:** Commander Shepard’Reegar vas Normandy_  
_Commander Shepard,_  
_It is with my deepest regret that I must inform you that your neloi, Admiral Kal’Reegar vas Normandy, was killed in action while assisting the turians on Palaven. He has gone to be with the ancestors and his sacrifice will be recorded in the histories of the quarian people. I know that this is small solace to you who have given so much already._  
_On a personal note, I was born on the_ Idenna _and came to the_ Tonbay _after my Pilgrimage. I have known Kal and his family for most of his life. Quarians can be a hard people to read but there was no mistaking the devotion that he felt for you. In taking your ship name rather than Rannoch for his own, he made a statement to our people that you were the most important thing in his life and he would have followed you anywhere you wished to go. If, after this war is over, you find yourself wondering where to go, I hope that you will consider Rannoch. The plot of land that the two of you claimed by Tali’s rock is yours. You have a home here whenever you wish and your inclusion as one of our people is by your own merit as well as your bond with Kal’Reegar._  
_I have included the article on his death. I hope it brings you more pride than pain._  
_Keelah se’lai, Shepard._  
_Raan_

 **ANN Alert: New Article on "Quarian Fleet"**  
**From: Alliance News Network Information Partners**  
_Palaven - The Turian Hierarchy, one of the most powerful and respected ground forces in the galaxy, are today paying respects to an unlikely ally: the marines of the Quarian Fleet._  
_The weakened immune systems of quarians normally means their forces are restricted to ships. But when an emergency technical team was required to repair a ground-based com relay, providing vital intel to the turian military, one quarian squad stepped up._  
_Commanded by squad leader Kal'Reegar, the quarian team repaired the com system, then sacrificed their lives holding the position until krogan troops arrived._  
_When turian troops offered to provide evac support, Reegar refused, insisting they could not risk the relay falling. He said multiple breaches to their exo-suits made evacuation impossible._  
_"We're all dead anyway," Reegar reportedly said. "Just make them pay for it."_  
_A spokesman for Primarch Victus praised the squad's bravery._  
_"Whatever our past politics, today the galaxy stands together against a single threat," Victus said. "We are humbled by the sacrifice of our allies from Rannoch, and we promise to return the honor."_

I closed the message and my lips twitched in a stillborn smile. That sounded like my Kal. I was proud of him. I was proud beyond words. I was also broken. I hadn’t even had enough time to adjust to being a wife before I’d been forced to become a widow because I’d decided to marry a big goddamn hero. I’d known he was a damn hero from the moment I met him and I’d loved him for it. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t a part of me that wished he’d been just a little less noble. He was supposed to come back. He was supposed to be waiting for me. 

My body began to tremor and my knees gave out. Garrus and Liara were by my side in a heartbeat as I wrapped my arms around myself the way Kal used to do and curled in on myself. “No!” I screamed into the floor as my world crumbled around me. “No!” Not Kal. Not Kal. Take me. Let me die. I’ve already done it once. Just don’t make me live in a world where he’ll never again walk through my door or laugh at me for having tosca on my chin or tease me for falling through a fish tank or look at me like I hold all of the good in the galaxy. Don’t make me live in a world where his eyes no longer glow. I pictured him lying in a field of fire and death with the golden enviro-suit that announced to all of his people that he belonged to someone torn and ragged, the red life’s blood a macabre mocking of the red that he’d once worn when he was available, his beautiful eyes dim, his constantly moving form forever still. I screamed out my rage and pain and loss as Garrus and Liara put their arms around me and held me through the storm. 

My hand clenched the chain that held not only my dog tags but the seal he’d given me as an engagement ring. He was my air and without him, I couldn’t breathe. My lungs tightened and I clawed at the collar of my fatigues as my throat locked up. “I can’t breathe,” I gasped, panicked. “I can’t breathe.” 

“EDI, get Dr. Chawkas,” Garrus ordered. “It’s all right, Shepard,” he said to me, taking my hands firmly in his to stop my nails from raking over the skin of my throat. “Look at me. You can breathe. You have air. You’re safe. Breathe with me, Shepard.” I matched his breaths and the constriction in my throat began to ease. A moment later, Karin stepped into the room and I felt a sharp prick against my neck and Garrus said, “Sleep now, Shepard. Just rest.”

I woke some time later to my dim cabin. There was a body in my bed and I curled into it without thinking. It was too soft but its arms came around me and held me tight and I began to sob as I realized that it was Liara. It wasn’t Kal. It would never be Kal again. She stroked my hair and spoke softly, comforting me like a mother as I cried into her shoulder. The bed dipped and talons ran gently over my back as Garrus joined us. They were still here. I should have known they wouldn’t have left me. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said into Liara’s shoulder. 

“You can and you will,” she said firmly. “You aren’t alone. You don’t have to do it all by yourself. We’ll help you.”

Garrus said, “He gave you a purpose, Shepard. Make them pay for it.”

He was right. Of course he was right. No one fucked with Commander Shepard’s people. I was going to make what we did to the Collectors look like mercy. Fury replaced the sorrow and I sat up and nodded. “We’re going to give them hell,” I growled. “We are going to make them regret ever deciding that we were theirs to harvest. Invading our galaxy will be the last goddamn thing the Reapers ever do.”

“There’s our girl,” Garrus said. “We will carve his name into whatever passes for their damn skull.”

“Damn right,” I said. “Joker, get us to the Citadel. We need to stock up and be ready for the final push when we hit Cerberus. It’s time to finish this once and for all.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” he said.

“Thank you guys for being here,” I told my companions. “I couldn’t ask for better friends.”

“Of course, Shepard,” Liara said. “I hope you don’t mind that I slept here. Garrus took up the whole couch.”

“Any time, Shepard,” Garrus said. “And that couch is a damn sight more comfortable than my cot. Not all of us have fancy beds in our quarters, T’Soni.”

“Thought you just needed a rug to make it homey, Vakarian,” she shot back.

I forced a weak smile at the banter I suspected was for my own benefit. There would be time for grief later if we survived this. I would have decades and decades to grieve…. 

Jack was waiting in my apartment when I dragged myself in. I’d given all of my crew access so it wasn’t entirely a surprise to find that it wasn’t empty. I hadn’t been alone since I’d gotten the news about Kal. Even when I was in my cabin at night, EDI was a constant presence. She did her best to comfort me and when I asked how she was able to be so compassionate, she said that she had run a simulation in which Jeff had died. It was not something she wished to repeat. That it was Jack who’d volunteered for babysitting duty surprised me until I came over to the couch and saw what she was doing. She was finishing a tattoo of a unicorn on her ankle. “Rodriguez?” I asked quietly.

“Didn’t keep her damn barriers up,” Jack snarled. “I warned her what would happen.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Yeah,” she sighed as she cocked her head and evaluated the tattoo. “Heard about Reegar. I drew something up.” My omni-tool pinged and I opened it to find an image of one of the yellow flowers I’d given him with the letters KRS in the center with the R slightly larger than the others. “We can change it if you want. I don’t know your first name, so I went with S for Shepard. Thought you might want something special for him. I can put his name on your back, too, if you want.”

“I never use it,” I told her. “This is perfect.” 

She ignored the tears that came to my eyes and gestured. “Strip. Figure you could use something that hurts on the outside for a little while.”

I stripped to the waist and laid back on the couch. Her hands were impersonal as she applied the tattoo gun to the spot over my heart. That I didn’t have to tell her where I wanted it told me that she either understood or just knew me. Either way, it was touching. When she finished, I rolled over. Rather than place his name with the rest of the _Normandy_ crew, she put it across the top between the image of the monument and my unit crest. If I died at the end of this, there would be no doubt to whom I’d belonged. 

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” I admitted into my forearms. 

“Hell, we all know that,” she said.

“The thought of dying at the end of this doesn’t scare me anymore,” I said.

She said, “Fuck, Shepard. I am the last person to help you out with that. You need to talk to Kasumi, not me. All I can tell you is to keep your shit together and kick the Reapers’ asses. If you don’t make it, then you don’t make it. And if you do, you fucking deal with it then.” Her voice softened and she said, “You’re just tired, Shepard. You’ve been asked to do the impossible over and over and you’ve done it. Of course you’re going to burn out eventually. There. It’s done.”

“Thanks, Jack,” I said. 

“Any time. I drank your beer, by the way.”

“Of course you did.”


	12. Chapter 12

When the wave of fire from the Crucible washed over me, I didn’t feel pain. I felt relief. Finally, finally, it was done. I could rest. I could go into whatever lay beyond and walk the stars with Kal again. I felt regret for the crew I was leaving behind but it was Kal’s face that followed me into the dark, his eyes that lit my way. It was finished. The Reapers would die. There was no more battle, no more war, no more missions to run or planets to save or enemies to fight. I could let go in the knowledge that my family would be safe and that I was leaving the galaxy a brighter place than I found it. The children of our children would never have to fear what lay in wait in the dark spaces because I had killed the monsters for them. I had done that much, at least.

Rather than eternal darkness or a far-off sea or a seat at the bar, I woke to the sound of machines beeping steadily and the bright white light of a hospital room. The glow from the windows told me it was real sun outside so I wasn’t on the Citadel. That meant I was probably on Earth. I’d lived. The knowledge was disappointing. I had pushed everything aside for an after I hadn’t believed would exist and now it was time to face all of those demons and I would have the rest of a long life to do it in because if the damn Reapers hadn’t killed me, what the hell would? Time. Time and grief. I was nothing but a soldier and yet I had no more fight left in me. I was empty, a shell of what I’d been. 

“She’s waking up,” a familiar voice said. Of course Garrus would be here. 

“Should we sedate her again?” Liara asked. 

“No,” Miranda now. “She can come out of it on her own.”

A hand slipped into mine and I opened dull eyes to find my two best friends standing beside my bed. Miranda was off to the side and she and Dr. Chakwas were conferring over something. Jack leaned up against the doorway with Wrex and Grunt behind her. “How long?” I asked.

“Three months,” Garrus answered. “The Reapers are dead. Your crew made it. The _Normandy_ had a rough ride and it took us some time but we got back with EDI’s help. Admiral Hackett has the ship in dry dock being repaired now.”

“Anderson?” I asked, though I knew the answer. Liara shook her head.

Over the weeks that followed, I learned to walk again. My spine had been broken and most of my skin had to be replaced with more grafts. As soon as I was well enough, Jack touched up my memorials and put Kal back over my heart. My crew stayed with me. Liara found an estate outside of London that had room for all of us and the doctors released me from the hospital to finish recovering there. Rebuilding began quickly. Everyone wanted things to go back to normal. I could have told them it would never be normal again. I was offered a spot on the Alliance defense committee. I turned it down. I was offered a seat on the Council. I accepted it. My goal was to get the quarians, drell, and krogan accepted into the Council races. It gave me something to do. My apartment had been destroyed in the blast. I was all right with that. The last time I was there, all I could see was Kal and it just reminded me of what we could have had and of what we’d lost. I hadn’t been able to sleep in our bed. I wouldn’t have gone back anyway. 

Sparatus and Tevos had survived. Major Kirrahe took Valern’s seat on the Council. Earth hosted it while the relays were being repaired. We started on the relays to the homeworlds first. The quarians still had enough of their liveships that they were able to feed both their people and the turians but it wouldn’t be enough forever. Some of the turians and krogan decided that their systems were close enough to make it home at FTL speeds and set out into the unknown. Victus stayed since most of his people were in the Sol system. Admiral Raan came to visit me a few times. I told her that I wanted to go back to Rannoch with them when they went. 

Garrus wanted to get back to Palaven and Liara wanted to help rebuild Thessia. Wrex and Grunt would return to Tuchanka. Jack was already talking about going back to Grissom Academy with Kahlee Sanders. Samara wanted to go back to the monastery with Falere. Miranda and Oriana planned to go home to Australia. Jacob and Brynn were going to find a home somewhere on the Mediterranean. Zaeed was going to Beckenstein. Kasumi…well, who knew with her? Kaidan, Vega, and Cortez were staying with the Alliance. My family was scattering. Rannoch was a place where I could be close to Kal without being alone. 

When the relays were completed, the Council suggested a victory tour. I didn’t particularly want to do it. I didn’t like being held up as a hero. But they’d given in to my demands and had even said that the newly added races would have an embassy once we’d finished rebuilding the Citadel. I figured making a few stops on the homeworlds with my crew was the least I could do before going to Rannoch. We made a circuit beginning with Tuchanka and ending with Palaven. The krogan threw a party. There were massive bonfires and barrels of ryncol and seventeen krogans died. Wrex said it was tame. He also informed me that I had fifty-two new breeding requests. I turned them down. The salarians made speeches. For such a short-lived species, they certainly spent a lot of time talking. I was bored to tears until Kirrahe and Jondam Bau sat beside me and began to give a running commentary on the speakers. The asari were gracious and blessedly quick with the whole thing. It hurt saying goodbye to Liara. 

Palaven was last. It was somehow fitting that one of the first to join me every time was also the last to leave. Garrus was more than my friend. He was my brother. Victus understood that I was tired of ceremony and, rather than give one, he gave me a tour. I’d never been to the turian homeworld. It was better reconstructed than the others I’d seen, reflecting the military discipline that permeated their society. Garrus took me to his family’s estate and let me meet his father and sister. They thanked me for bringing him back alive. I saw General Corinthus again and he saluted me. 

Victus asked me to tour the hospitals. He said that there were still soldiers there who had requested to see me. Strangely, though, the first room he took me to didn’t house a turian. He and Garrus shared a look as the doctors came up and began to talk to them. I walked in and stopped when I saw a quarian standing at the window. He was holding something in his hand and rubbing it like a worry stone. “I still don’t remember,” he said when he heard the door. “You might as well save your time and mine.”

My heart stuttered at the familiar voice and my knees went weak. “Kal?”

He turned and cocked his head. “Do I know you?” he asked.

I removed my helmet and said, “Kal, it’s me. Shepard.”

“Nelai,” he said quietly. “Why did I call you that?”

“Because you’re my neloi,” I said. “You don’t remember?”

“Flashes,” he said. “Disjointed bits and pieces that don’t make sense. Geth. A colossus. Images from the Fleet. A planet I can’t have been to. A woman giving me this.” He held up the disc I’d given him. “You, I think.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I gave that to you before we went through the Omega 4 relay. They’re flowers from Rannoch.”

“Who am I?” he asked.

“Admiral Kal’Reegar vas Normandy; formerly Kal’Reegar vas Tonbay nar Idenna,” I answered.

He shook his head and said, “It’s right there. I can feel it. I just…can’t connect to it.”

The doctors came into the room and one said, “You know him?”

“He’s my husband,” I answered. “This is Kal’Reegar. I was told he and his squad died guarding a comm relay.”

The doctor nodded and said, “That’s what we thought. The krogans found him. He was near death when they did. We were able to save him but he’d taken a blow to the head and suffered amnesia. We knew he was one of that squad but not which one. Their suits were all similar and we’d never seen any of them beneath the mask to be able to tell. He didn’t carry identification. All he had on his person was that token he carries and a set of seals for a human breather system.”

Victus said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, Commander. I had suspected due to the seals but we weren’t sure and we didn’t want to get your hopes up if it wasn’t him. We were hoping his memory would return. Then the comm systems were down and I wasn’t sure if he’d even made it.”

“You’re certain this is Kal’Reegar?” the doctor asked.

I didn't need to see him to know but I did need to see him, so I went up to him and raised my hand. When I paused, he nodded and I pressed the button to clear his mask. I smiled and said, “Welcome home, neloi.”

“Give us a minute,” he said and the others left the room. He placed his hands hesitantly on my arms and said, “I think I remember kissing you on a world with rock formations and a stream. I remember the smell of flowers and rain.” 

“Rannoch,” I said. 

“How is that possible?” he asked. “The geth drove us from Rannoch three hundred years ago.”

“We got it back,” I told him. “Your people live there now. I’m going there when we’re finished here. Will you come with me?”

“Always,” he said. “Damn it, I can almost tell that there’s meaning there.”

“It’ll come,” I told him. 

“Maybe this’ll help,” he said and unsealed his mask. “Ancestors know they’ve got me on enough immunoboosters I should be able to survive anything.” With that, he bent his head and brushed his lips against mine. I had intended on being easy with him, not pushing, letting him take his time if he needed, and trying to wrap my head around all that had just happened but the sight of his eyes glowing down into mine and the feel of his lips on my skin was too much. Everything that had happened since that day on the docks crashed into me and my carefully crafted wall of reserve broke. I threw my arms around him and kissed him with all of the grief and fear and passion and relief and joy that I had in me. He lost his hesitancy and his arms wrapped tightly around me as he kissed me back just as fiercely. He pulled back and looked at me for a long moment and then said, “I don’t know who you are but I know I love you. I think I’ve always loved you. I feel like…like I’ve come home. Is that enough for now?”

“You’re alive. It’s enough,” I told him. “I always knew you were a damn hero.” I wasn’t sure if I was laughing or crying or both. It didn’t matter that he didn’t remember all of it. He remembered what we had and what we were to each other. He could learn the rest. I’d gladly spend the rest of my life teaching him if that was what it took.


	13. Chapter 13

We left for Rannoch the following day. The doctors had explained that the memories weren’t really gone. He just couldn’t consciously access the pathways that connected them. He remembered things about the Fleet. He remembered enough pieces of the war to know that the Reapers had been the enemy. He remembered his people as a whole even if he didn’t remember individuals or even his own life. The _Normandy_ connected more. He knew his way around engineering and our cabin without having to be shown. He knew where to find the med bay and he looked at the AI core and said, “A geth was in there.” He knew how to use a weapon and I found him tinkering with an old omni-tool of mine that had gotten broken. He fixed it.

We slept in the same bed but I didn’t make any advances on him as much as I was desperate to be with him. It felt too much like taking advantage when he didn’t know who we were. He had to be the one to initiate and he was. The morning we were to arrive on Rannoch, I woke to his lips against my neck. He slept in his enviro-suit but he’d removed it before waking me. I opened my eyes and drank in the sight of him. “Your hair’s short,” I said inanely. It was longer than a standard military cut and a bit shaggy. It stood up in spikes in such a way that made me picture him running his hand through it as he debated whether to do this or not. It was different but it was damn sexy. 

“It wasn’t before?” he asked. 

“No. It was long,” I told him. 

“I remember it growing in the hospital. Guess they had to cut it,” he said against my throat. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” I said, tilting my head back to give him better access. “I like it.” 

“Good. Is this okay?” he asked. “You haven’t seemed…I mean, you look but you haven’t…do you want this?”

“I want you, Kal,” I said breathlessly. “I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“No worries there, ma’am,” he said and for a moment he sounded like his old self again. 

He removed my tank top and shorts and sat back to look at me the way he had the first time. I was struck by nervousness all over again. What if he didn’t like what he saw now? I had more scars than before and the marks of what I’d been through were written across my body. He didn’t seem to notice. His hand reached out and traced the tattoo over my heart. “Is that for me?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I got it after they told me you died.”

“Did it hurt?” he asked.

“Losing you? That hurt like hell. The tattoo? No,” I said. 

“Is it the only one?” he asked.

In reply, I turned over and felt his fingers trace my back. They paid special attention to his name. I felt him shift and then his lips pressed against it. He said something that sounded familiar but that I didn’t understand and I realized it was the phrase he’d said before that my translator was never able to catch. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“I’ve never told you that before?” he replied.

“No,” I said. “You’ve said it but you’ve never translated.”

“It’s old Khelish. I will walk with you through the stars for you are my home. My soul belongs to you,” he said. “It’s a vow we make to our nelai.”

I was going to say something but then his hands were roaming down my back and all I could think of was the feel of his skin against mine. He turned me so that I was facing him and kissed me deeply as he learned my body again. His tongue flicked over the mark that he’d given me and my fingers traced his. His hands cupped my breasts and then slid down my ribs to frame my waist. He leaned down and nipped my hip with his teeth and I gasped. He groaned when my hand found his hair and my tongue trailed down his chest and abdomen as I rolled him beneath me. He was the one arching into me when I licked the spot where his belly button would have been and then moved lower still. I took him into my mouth and felt his muscular leg lock around me as harsh breaths ripped from his throat. “Keelah, Shepard,” he groaned when I licked the pointed edge on his underside. 

When he was riding the edge, I released him and he quickly flipped us over. His mouth claimed mine and I felt his finger slide into me. My nails dug into his back as he ran his thumb over me and my hips bucked. “Please, Kal!” I moaned. “I need you. Please!” He smiled and withdrew his hand before pressing against me. He cupped my face as he pushed into me and when our hands joined, they fit together like we were truly designed for it. I wrapped my legs around his waist and met his thrusts as we drove each other higher. The sounds we made echoed off of the bulkheads and filled the room. I ignored the tears that fell. I’ve never been one to cry during sex but this was Kal and he was alive and we were together when I’d thought that this bed would forever be devoid of his presence. He kissed them away and drew back to look at me as we strove together. His eyes, so full of light and life and fire, bored into me as if memorizing me and I whispered his name as I tightened and came around him. He followed soon after and we were content to simply hold each other in the aftermath. 

He eventually said, “I think that if this were a cheesy vid, I’d be able to tell you I remembered everything right now.”

“That’s usually how it works with human vids,” I said. 

“I got more flashes. Did I bite you without consent?” he asked.

“I liked it,” I told him. “When I understood what it meant, I asked you to do it again.”

“I remember licking tosca off of you,” he said. “I don’t remember why.”

“I tried and failed spectacularly at cooking dextro food for you,” I told him. “Garrus ended up having to help us out. I can kill the Reapers and make peace between the quarians and geth but don’t expect me to cook dinner. And you can’t cook. You might starve.”

“I’ll live,” he said. “There’s always nutrient paste.”

“Gross,” I said. “I’ll learn. I’m sure with seventeen million quarians on Rannoch, someone can teach me how to cook. Garrus was supposed to do it but then you…well, there just didn’t seem to be a point.”

“I heard someone call you Councilor yesterday,” he said as he rolled off of me and pulled my head to his chest. 

“Yeah,” I said. “That happened after the war. The last one tried to kill the others. I killed him. They gave me his job. Quarians are a Council race now, by the way. Raan is your ambassador. I’m working on the geth. That’s going to be a bit more of a fight.”

He shook his head. “I still can’t believe we’re allies with them now. Are you sure they aren’t going to turn on us again?”

“I’m sure,” I said and told him about going into the geth consensus with Legion. That just led to more questions and I finally said, “I’ll sit down and tell you the whole thing later.”

___

Raan made sure that the party that greeted us was small so that we didn’t overwhelm Kal. His parents were in the group as well as his grandfather. They weren’t wearing their masks. Raan explained that the geth had begun helping them build their immune systems and that they were now able to walk around for a few hours a day without them. She said that they would likely keep their suits as they had cultural meanings but that soon they wouldn’t actually need them. She and I talked while Kal reconnected with his family. His formality told me that he didn’t remember them but didn’t want to hurt them. I thought it might have been better if they’d come in their masks. He’d never seen his people without them outside of a clean room. 

The people eventually withdrew and we walked over to the site of our future home. Work had already begun on it. Raan and I had sat down on one of her visits and discussed the plans for it. She’d mentioned that the geth had offered to build it. The floors were in place and the walls were framed out in metal beams. The living room window would overlook the stream and Tali’s spot would be in the back yard. We walked over to it and he said, “There’s something important here.”

“Tali’Zorah vas Rannoch,” I said. 

“The colossus,” he said. “There’s something about the colossus.”

“You held it off for several days,” I told him. “They got through to her when you got shot after the rest of your team died and you started running a fever. You refused to leave her, though. We brought her home and buried her here.”

He closed his eyes and said, “That was when I met you. You blew the colossus up.”

“The Cain,” I said affectionately. “I loved that gun.”

He bent down and ran his fingers over the spot where Tali lay. “Keelah se’lai, Tali’Zorah.” We went to the stream and he removed his mask and tilted his head up to the sun like he’d done the first time. I watched him as I had then and he said. “I smell the flowers.”

“Keep your eyes closed,” I told him. I had an idea. Scent was one of the strongest memory triggers in humans. It might work the same way for quarians. I did what I had done the first time and the scent of ozone and petrichor filled the air from my glowing hand. I brought it up to his face and he breathed deeply. 

His eyes popped open and he looked at me with a startled expression. “I remember. Not everything. Not yet. But I remember this. I kissed you right here for the first time. And again when we…we…you killed a Reaper.”

“Right,” I said with a smile. “The rest will come.”


	14. Chapter 14

I place the datapad on the table and lean back in my chair to stretch muscles that have gone stiff from sitting here for so long. Kal steps back and his fingers go unerringly to the spots with the worst tension. Muscle aches are nothing new and he knows that if they aren’t dealt with now, I’ll be too stiff to move by nightfall. I can hear the stream through the open window and breathe deeply. “It’s going to rain tonight,” I tell him. I can feel it in my joints. 

It’s been six months since we came to Rannoch. Our house is complete and even has extra room for the friends who visit often. We’ve started to talk about adopting a child. Kal’s memory is still spotty but it’s coming back. Writing out our story for him has helped to trigger most of it. He still doesn’t remember his final fight and the doctors say he probably never will. He knows what he did and that’s enough. We both deal with what we’re told is PTSD and survivor’s guilt. That probably won’t ever change. We’ve lost too many to simply be able to accept that we’re still here. I’m still fighting for the geth and Raan is helping me. The tide seems to be turning. Sparatus and Tevos, of course, are the holdouts. Kirrahe agrees that they’ve earned a chance. I’m now trying to get Raan and Bakarah on the Council. Wrex sent me a picture last week of Urdnot Mordin. It’s a girl, of course, and she’s decided that she wants to be a scientist. The Citadel is almost complete. I’ve gone back to Earth once and there’s still evidence of the war everywhere but it’s coming together. 

Kal leans down and kisses my shoulder before reaching across me for the datapad. I give him my chair and go into the kitchen. I’m trying a new dish. It’s something Zel’Koris’ nelai taught me and it’s my first time making it alone. Kal has begun to learn to cook as well. He made lasagna for me last night. It was surprisingly good. I didn’t even need hot sauce. He reads while I cook. A breeze comes in through the open window and stirs his hair. He’s kept it short and it’s still a bit strange to see him sitting in the living room in a t-shirt and a pair of stretchy, fitted pants rather than his enviro-suit and mask. He still wears the suit in public but he’s come to appreciate other clothing as well. He still takes my breath away. His glowing eyes catch mine and he smiles, flashing his teeth. I smile back and then realize I’m about to burn the si’la. I force my attention back to the task at hand. 

I still haven’t gotten the hang of this wife thing. Fortunately, Kal’s as much of a soldier as I am and doesn’t expect domesticity out of me any more than I do from him. We’re both more comfortable with a gun in hand than we are a spatula and we’re eternally grateful for the cleaning mech because swabbing decks isn’t the same thing as sweeping floors and there’s a lot of stuff that gets tracked in. The quarians had a symbiotic relationship with the flora here. The desert grasses were spread with their movements and you can’t walk anywhere without picking up some kind of seed or plant matter. I’ve gotten used to it.

I retained my Spectre status and, every now and then, Kal and I will swing by Palaven or Thessia and pick up one of our old crewmembers to go on a mission. We usually take Garrus now that Liara is pregnant. Javik threatened to throw me out the airlock if I got her hurt. It doesn’t seem to matter to him that he’s living on a planet again. He’ll find an airlock somewhere. Garrus still isn’t married but he’s a devoted uncle to his sister’s son. He says he just hasn’t found the right woman yet. I still wish I’d been able to introduce him to Nyreen. 

Kal puts the datapad down and comes into the kitchen. I’m not at all surprised when he slides his arms around me and rests his chin on my shoulder. He says, “It was blue and white.”

“What was?” I ask. 

“The dress Liara loaned you for our wedding. It was blue and white. You had tucked those yellow flowers in your hair. And when we went through the Omega 4 relay, you sent Legion through the vents. Jack protected us from the seeker swarms. I fell and you caught me. I remember it, Shepard. I remember you,” he says.

I drop the spoon I’m holding into the pan and turn to him. “You do?” I ask. 

“All of it,” he says. “Nelah voi keelah len day’ya a’ ton.”

I wrap my arms around his neck and say, “I’ll walk through the stars with you for the rest of my life, Kal’Reegar. You are my home. My soul is yours.”


End file.
